Jury of Hearts
by absumoaevum
Summary: Draco Malfoy and Hermione Granger return to Hogwarts to escape their fractured lives after the Second Wizarding War. Only after they've arrived do they realize that the place where they've gone to hide may end up revealing more about them than they ever thought possible. (AU 8th Year Dramione) This story updates weekly, sometimes more often.
1. Chapter 1

**Disclaimer: _Harry Potter_ is property of J.K. Rowling and Warner Bros Entertainment Inc. This story is not written for profit and no copyright infringement is intended.**

* * *

**Part I: A Lonely Heart Cannot Atone**

**Chapter 1**

* * *

Hermione stood in her room at the Leaky Cauldron, having just finished folding the last of her new school robes. She laid them neatly on her bed along with her glossy school books, cauldron and potions supplies, some carefully selected Muggle clothes, and her fluffy ginger cat, Crookshanks, who was sprawled across _The Standard Book of Spells, Grade Seven _and a pile of eagle feather quills. Her brand new hide trunk sat empty, its mouth gaping open, waiting to be packed. Hermione referenced her Hogwarts supply list again, running over the checklist of books and other necessities listed there and checking off each item as she located it on the bed.

Once she was satisfied that all items were present, she pointed her wand at the trunk and gave it a little flick. The items on the bed jolted to life and began to pack themselves into the trunk. Crookshanks hissed as the quills tugged themselves from underneath him and zoomed away. He sprang up and tore after them, trying to whack them out of the air with his paw, but a binder had unlatched itself and enveloped the quills before he could catch one.

Smiling, Hermione took one last look at the trunk, its contents settled tidily inside. With a curt nod of approval, she shut the lid. Crookshanks looked up at her, an expression of unmistakable peevishness on his squashed face, and his tail jerked back and forth like a very fluffy whip.

There was a light knock at the door, and Hermione and Crookshanks both turned to see Harry poking his head inside the room. "Nearly ready?" he asked, walking over to stand beside her.

"I wish the two of you were coming with me," she said. He threw and arm over her shoulder as Crookshanks threaded himself between their legs, purring.

"Yeah, Hermione, I know. I'm glad _you're _going, though. It'll be good for you," he said.

Ron rapped on the open door and came in as well. "Almost done, Hermione?"

"Um-hmm," she said as Ron joined them in standing around her trunk. The three of them stared down at it, and Hermione felt a knot forming in her throat. This trunk and its contents symbolized so much: their childhood, what they fought for and what she was leaving behind, a whole year without Ron and Harry.

Hermione ducked from under Harry's arm and hugged Ron instead. "Can't you two come?" she pleaded. "Finishing school is just as important as Auror training!"

Ron flushed, and his eyes darted to Harry. He jerked his head pointedly at the door as if to say, _"Get out while you still can, mate!"_

"I'll just be out in the hallway, then," Harry said, and he made for the door, leaving the couple alone in Hermione's room.

Ron ran his hands over Hermione's bare arms and detached them from his neck, rubbing his thumbs over her knuckles. "Look, we'll be where we're supposed to be, and you'll be where you're supposed to be."

"But..." Hermione couldn't think of anything to say to that. She gazed into his blue eyes, tears welling up in her own.

"We'll send you loads of owls, and Ginny and Luna will be there, and Harry's going to give some sort of presentation to the D.A.D.A. classes, so you'll see him then. And we'll all be at the Burrow over Christmas and we'll meet you in Hogsmeade some weekends. You'll have more of us than you can handle, I reckon."

Hermione still seemed unconvinced. "I'll miss you both so much. I don't know what I'll do without you there with me."

"It won't be _so _bad, Hermione." Ron brushed away a tear from her cheek and tilted her chin up. "Besides, you'll be busy with studying for N.E.W.T.s, won't you?" He shuddered dramatically. "Better you than me!" She laughed without really smiling, and he kissed her forehead.

"I suppose you're right."

"That's my girl. Come on, then! Don't want to miss the train!"

Hermione nodded and bent to catch Crookshanks while Ron went to the door and called Harry back in. The boys both watched in amusement while Hermione wrestled Crookshanks into his wicker cage and shut its door.

Together, the three old friends turned on the spot, apparating to Platform 9¾.

* * *

Draco waited until the last possible second to come down from his room and say his farewells to his parents. He found them in the drawing room, where only months before Death Eaters had met to discuss their great plans for world domination, where blood had once stained the hardwood floor crimson. It looked vast and empty and unkempt now, without even a fire to warm the shadows.

His mother pulled his father up out of his customary chair, the one closest to the empty hearth. As Draco approached, he could hear her heated whispers to his father like the susurrus of autumn wind in the branches of the old elm outside the drawing room windows, now almost completely obscured by heavy velvet curtains.

"Mother, it's time," said Draco, hardly glancing at his father.

"I wish you weren't going, Draco," she said, her smile faltering a little.

Draco covered her hand with his. "I know, Mother." He was through arguing about it, and despite his mother's conclusion that his decision to return Hogwarts to repeat his seventh year was a bad one, he was determined. They stood for a long moment in silence, the stillness of the dim room pressing in on them.

"I'm going to be late," he said, and his mother flinched a little, startled by the suddenness of his words. Draco clasped her hand in his and squeezed it. "Mother," he said, and she turned wide eyes to him, "it's alright. Everything is going to be fine."

"But what if—"

"No _if_s, Mother," Draco interrupted, trying to keep his expression kind despite his annoyance. "It took all the influence we have left to make this happen. You wouldn't have tried so hard to get me back into school if this wasn't as important to you as it is to me."

His mother made a dismissive noise and said, "Of course it's important to me, Draco. Your happiness is the most important thing, but—"

"No _but_s, either." Draco forced himself to smile encouragingly down at his mother's pleading face. "I have to go." His kissed her hand and released it, then stretched out his own hand to his father to shake. There was a tense moment, but his father took it and shook feebly, his eyes darting, flashing milky yellow and silver in the half-light, looking anywhere but at Draco's face.

Draco took a step back and turned to leave, but his mother cried out and flung her arms around him, sobbing into his shoulder. He looked up at his father with all the malice he could muster. _This is your responsibility. Come here and help me_, he thought. His father shuffled over and gently pried her away from her son.

"You will write, won't you?" his mother asked, tears running down her cheeks as his father dug dazedly in his robes for a handkerchief.

"Of course I will," said Draco, though he knew he wouldn't. If his mother was expecting daily reports on his progress at Hogwarts, she was sorely mistaken. But he wasn't going to bring that up just now. He just wanted to get to the station and let the train carry him away with his decision before he had time to change his mind. Or his mother changed it for him.

When it became clear that his father wasn't going to find one, Draco produced his own handkerchief and extended it to his mother, who took it with a sniffle. "I'll see you over Hogsmeade weekends and during winter break," he said, not wanting to mention the times they would _definitely _see each other that year. "It will be fine, Mother. I want to do this."

She blew her nose into his handkerchief and nodded. He gave her one last hug, then headed for the foyer where his trunk and traveling cloak waited for him, listening to her renewed sobs echoing down the hallway. That sound, the sound of his mother's sorrowful, slightly-muffled weeping, stayed with him as he apparated alone to the crowded platform of King's Cross Station.

People rushed past him where he stood rather awkwardly with his trunk and empty owl cage. Some passersby gawked, glancing back over their shoulders as they hurried by, or else pointed and muttered vehemently to their companions behind their hands. Draco tried not to let it bother him. There was definitely more of _that _on the way. _Might as well get used to it_.

The train's whistle trilled, and Draco dragged his trunk over to a line of luggage carts. The steam from the scarlet engine billowed up from the smokestack in a thick fog, and when he neared the front of the train with his laden cart wobbling along in front of him, he found it nearly impossible to make out the silhouettes of other people in the gloom. He spotted an opening in one of the train cars and made for it, thankful that this year, at least, he'd be able to use magic to load his trunk into a compartment, because he was quite sure that no one was going to help him.

Draco hadn't gone ten steps through the grey mist before the corner of his cart collided with a girl, nearly knocking her over. Something she was holding went careening to the ground ,hissing and sputtering as it hit the platform with a crunch. He managed to catch the girl's flailing hand before she fell and held her steady as she righted herself. She looked up, huffing and annoyed, and he realized who it was: Hermione Granger. She must have recognized him too, because she whipped her hand from his grasp and shot him a scathing look before stooping to recover the quaking and yowling animal crate.

Draco was about to say something, though he wasn't sure what, when someone behind him spoke. "What are _you _doing here, Malfoy?"

Draco turned and found himself nose to nose with Harry Potter. A whole gaggle of Weasleys glowered menacingly behind Potter, some of their wands drawn defensively. Without a word, he staggered backward, nearly bumping into Granger again, grabbed hold of the handle of his cart, and took off down toward the other end of the platform, face flushed and heart racing.

* * *

When Hermione and Ginny's trunks were safely stored in a compartment on the train, they headed back to the Weasleys again to say goodbye. By the time they got to the platform, however, Hermione could see that they had company. The press had arrived in full force to document the first post-war crop of students headed off to school. A year ago, Hermione would have happily read an article bearing just such news, but now she settled for hoping she and her friends wouldn't be spotted.

They passed a reporter Hermione recognized from the _Daily Prophet. _Quill and notepad in hand, she had just begun to interview a young boy and his family.

"And what's your name, dear?"

"Letholdus Adderbose," the boy said, his chest puffed out and his smile a bright contrast to his tanned skin.

"Merlin, what a mouthful," the reporter said with a grin, jotting down the name then glancing up at Letholdus' parents.

"It's a family name," Letholdus explained.

The reporter nodded. "So, Letholdus, how does it feel to be starting Hogwarts this year?"

Ginny jerked her sharply to the right, and Hermione didn't catch the boy's answer. She turned to Ginny ask what was the matter, but Ginny was glancing over her shoulder at a woman wearing fashionable pink robes and a bright purple button that read _"Teen Witch Dish." _Hermione groaned.

"The Dish" was _Teen Witch_'s daily column of teen celebrity gossip. It was headed by Patience Bright, who Bill told them had graduated from Hogwarts the same year he did. He'd said she was an awful gossip at school, too. Hermione felt sure that if Slughorn had been around during Bright's time at Hogwarts, she would have been a jewel in his collection. A fashionable pink jewel. The whole thing made her want to scream.

"Hurry up," Ginny said, pulling Hermione along. "If the Dish sees us, we'll never get out of here."

They tried to be as inconspicuous as possible, but there was no hiding from the press when everyone they passed stared at them or shouted their names like an old friend. They found their group again, and Hermione immediately spotted two men with cameras standing a little ways off, snapping pictures of what she was sure they hoped would be a tearful farewell. Mrs. Weasley, who had noticed them too, glared with wintery disapproval while Bill, George, and Mr. Weasley did their best to block the cameramen from view.

"Just ignore them, mum," Ginny said, hugging her mother. "It doesn't matter."

A flash of bright light illuminated the fog of steam like lightning in a raincloud. Hermione hoped that the thick smoke would, at the very least, obscure their shot.

Mrs. Weasley pulled Hermione fretfully into her arms while Harry took Ginny aside for a moment alone. Hermione continued down the line, embracing Mr. Weasley, then George, then Bill and Fleur, before coming to a stop in front of Ron. More flashes of camera bulbs. It was hard not to feel like an animal in a zoo.

Ron pressed his forehead into hers and whispered, "I'll really miss you, Hermione."

"I'll miss you, too," she said, and then gave him a sheepish peck on the cheek, acutely aware of the crowd and the cameras and the whole Weasley family standing only feet away.

"Oi, 'Ermione!" yelled one of the cameramen over the commotion on the platform, "'Ow about a real kiss, then?" Hermione blushed scarlet, and Ron hugged her again as if trying to shield her from prying eyes and uncouth words.

"Why don't you sod off before I shove that camera—"

"George, _please!" _said Mrs. Weasley, gripping her son firmly by the arm before he could take two steps toward the cameramen. "Don't make a scene!"

"It's okay," Ron said to Hermione, kissing the top of her head. "Ignore them. You're going somewhere where they can't bother you anymore." Hermione nodded against his chest. She took several deep, bracing breaths, breathing in the familiar smell of him, then broke away.

"Alright, well, hurry up you two," called Mrs. Weasley as the train gave a final warning whistle. Hermione just had time to give Harry a quick hug _(Flash!) _before Ginny hooked her arm in the crook of Hermione's elbow and dragged her off toward the train, passed the reporters angling for an interview without so much as a glance in their direction. Together, they made their way to their empty compartment as the train began to move, and, waving from the window, they watched the Weasleys and Harry disappear from sight.

Ginny flopped down in her seat and let Arnold out of his cage. "I hate those vultures."

"Me, too," Hermione said. Nothing made her feel better about her decision to return to Hogwarts than the thought that she wouldn't have to worry about the army of cameramen and reporters and gawkers that hung around night and day. It was bad enough that the _Daily Prophet _ran an article at least once a week about the "young heroes of the Second Wizarding War," but _Witch Weekly _and _Teen Witch _kept up a relentless deluge of gossip columns and full spreads of misleading photos. They'd turned Hermione and her friends into caricatures of themselves, claiming to have the scoop on scandalous heartaches and break-ups and every other kind of melodramatic drivel they could think of to print. It was disgusting, and it was everywhere.

That was the very worst part: there seemed to be no escaping it. She didn't read the articles anymore, but she couldn't avoid the mountain of fanmail she received each week or the strangers coming up to her on the street, asking for a picture and an autograph and just a moment of the famous Hermione Granger's time. Her friends had gotten used to their celebrity in the months following the end of the Second Wizarding War; Hermione had not.

"So, I guess we'll be in the same classes this year, yeah?" Ginny said, changing the subject. She watched as her pygmy puff rolled around on the seat beside her.

Hermione sighed. "Looks like it. Are you going to carry on with Muggle Studies?" she asked, remembering that it had been a mandatory class Ginny's previous year.

"Yeah. I think it helps me get where Dad's coming from. Well, I mean, I think it'll help _this year_, now that there's a proper teacher and all."

"I expect so."

Crookshanks meowed from his cage, staring at Arnold hungrily. After a moment, Ginny changed the topic. "Do you know if you're still a Prefect? No one told me."

"I don't think so. My letter didn't say anything about it."

"Well, I hope you're not, for your sake. I think you'll have enough going on even without patrols."

Hermione nodded her agreement. She wanted this year to be as normal as possible. No surprises. Boring, if possible. Though Prefect duties generally meant attending committee meetings and patrolling the school after curfew, Hermione was relieved not to have to worry about it. "Speaking of patrols," she said, "who's the Head Boy this year?"

"Zacharias Smith." Ginny put her head in her hands dramatically, looking up at Hermione through her fingers and sighing. "He's going to be unbearable, I just know it. He's such a prat!" They laughed, and Hermione relaxed a little.

"Where's your badge?" Hermione asked, noticing Ginny wasn't wearing it.

"Oh, I pinned it to my uniform already so I wouldn't lose it. I just couldn't bring myself to wear it in front of Fre—of George," amended Ginny, recovering almost at once. "You know how he gets."

Hermione's stomach tightened again, and she forced herself to ignore Ginny's slip. It wasn't easy to pretend it didn't hurt. There was something deep and black with loss there that Hermione, like Ginny, tried to hide. She cleared her throat and struggled to think of something to fill the silence. "Why aren't you in the Prefects' compartments?"

"Let them wait," Ginny said with a careless wave. "I don't want you to have to sit here by yourself."

"No, it's okay! You should go, being Head Girl and all. I'll be fine," Hermione said as she dug around in her bag. "I brought a book." She procured _A History of Magical Symbolism in the British Isles _and showed it to Ginny.

"Great," Ginny said dryly. "Well, if you really don't mind, then I guess I'll head over there now. They might fall to pieces at any moment without the most under-qualified consequence of favoritism in the history of Hogwarts there to hammer the gavel or whatever it is I'm supposed to be doing."

Hermione understood Ginny's frustration at being made Head Girl without even having been a Prefect in years past, but she didn't know what to say. McGonagall, the new Headmistress, had wanted Ginny because of her involvement with the resistance at Hogwarts and her role in the war. She felt Ginny would command respect, and no one, including Ginny, could really argue with that.

Hermione watched Ginny stuff Arnold into his cage.

"Don't go anywhere," the redhead said, and she waved as she exited the compartment.

Hermione leaned against the window and propped her feet up on the seat. "I'll be right here," she said. The door slid shut.

* * *

Draco shoved his traveling cloak between his back and the window and leaned against it. He pushed his empty owl cage further into the opposite corner of the seat and stretched out on the cushion to read. Nobody had bothered him since they'd left King's Cross. People out in the corridor stared into his compartment sometimes, but no one had come in. Truthfully, he hoped no one _did _come in. He preferred to be alone.

Thumbing through the pages to find his place, Draco started in on chapter seventeen of _The Definitive Guide to Defense Against the Dark Arts _by Hector Nighthawrt and wondered vaguely who had assigned it. After all, there were at least three new vacancies to fill and applying to be a professor at Hogwarts School had come to be a bit like signing one's own death warrant. Whoever they got for the open teaching positions would have to be either very brave or very stupid. Or both.

Absently, he pulled at a black cord around his neck until two ornate keys slid out from under his robes. Draco stroked the craggy blade of the smaller bronze key as he read, distractedly weaving it through his fingers as the other key, a heavy black metal thing, rested against his chest. He had just turned the page of his book when he heard the door of his compartment slide open. He looked up, hurriedly shoving the keys out of sight in his robes again.

A girl with blond hair and protuberant grey eyes stood in the doorway staring fixedly at him. There was a brief pause, and he stared back, unsure of what to say or do.

"Hi," she said. Not waiting for a response, she came in and sat down on the seat opposite him, her hands under her thighs, still staring. He regarded her, nonplussed, then sort of nodded by way of greeting. She didn't seem to blink; she just stared and stared.

"You're Draco Malfoy," she said rather suddenly, "the boy who made fun of me and my friends for six years, the boy who tried to kill Headmaster Dumbledore, the boy who got the Dark Mark and became a Death Eater."

Draco pictured throwing his textbook at her, but said nothing.

"You're the boy who called Hermione Granger a 'Mudblood' and dueled Harry Potter and tried to have Hagrid sacked and helped Professor Umbridge break up the D.A. and helped those Carrow people torture students last year." There was another pause. She stuck out her hand. "I'm Luna Lovegood." Looking expectant, her hand waited there in the space between their two seats. Draco gaped at her.

Her hand hadn't moved. He sat upright, put his book on the seat next to him, and hesitantly took her hand. She shook it once, then let go.

"Why are you going back to Hogwarts?" she asked, repositioning to sit cross-legged on the cushion. He noticed her wand behind her ear, her Butterbeer cork necklace and radish earrings, and a magazine tucked into the back pocket of her jeans. She definitely seemed the type of person he would have teased, and he recognized her from somewhere else, somewhere he couldn't quite put a finger on...

He leaned his elbows on his knees and clasped his hands, considering how to answer her question. "Why do you care?"

"It seems like a realistic question to ask. Didn't you finish your seventh year already?"

Draco closed his eyes and sighed heavily, figuring that he was going to be answering this question a lot. "I didn't take the N.E.W.T.s."

"So they're letting you come back for the whole year? Why don't you just sit for the exams again?"

"I got a special exemption."

"Oh?"

Draco looked up at the girl. She seemed only politely interested, as if there were a more pressing, unrelated subject that she would rather be thinking about. "Yes," he said. "My family made a very generous donation to the rebuilding of Hogwarts castle." He tried not to sound proud of that fact.

"Really?" The Lovegood girl cocked her head and thought about this, some of the dreamy nonchalance fading from her eyes. "Interesting. I wonder if your parents think it will keep you all out of Azkaban."

Draco stood up in fury and crossed to the open door as if to get away from her, stuffing his hand into his pocket to grip a crumpled piece of paper there, then rounded on her. She was watching him with vague curiosity. "Do you talk to everyone like this?"

She didn't seem intimidated at all. "I think so," she said. "Do you mind if I stay in here for a while. It's much quieter."

He felt foolish just standing there, his hand in his robes' pocket, seething while she regarded him with placid interest. "Sure," he said stiffly. She took the rolled up magazine out of her pocket, opened it, and began to read.

Draco's eyes widened when he saw the magazine's front cover. The title read _The Quibbler_. The main headline, sprawled over a picture of Draco's father and mother, read "Impending Trials Will Decide Fate of Death Eater Family". Other, smaller headlines advertised a quiz titled "Do You Know Your Invisible Creatures?" and two articles called "Revisiting the Blibbering Humdinger" and "Magical Parasites and You".

Draco released his hold on the newspaper clipping in his pocket and slumped back in his seat. He grabbed his book and tried to take his mind off of how awful this year was going to be.

"By the way," said Luna without looking up from _The Quibbler_, "if I'm ever trapped in your cellar again, Gurdyroot tea is my favorite."

* * *

**A/N**: This story is an update of an old one of mine, _Atonement._ If you recognize it from somewhere, that's where. —Abbs


	2. Chapter 2

******Disclaimer: _Harry Potter_ is property of J.K. Rowling and Warner Bros Entertainment Inc. This story is not written for profit and no copyright infringement is intended.**

* * *

******Part I: A Lonely Heart Cannot Atone**

**Chapter 2**

* * *

It was a clear night with only a very slight breeze, and silver moonlight frosted the treetops along the road as Hermione rode with Ginny and her friends in the Thestral-drawn coach to Hogwarts. She'd only ever seen drawings of Thestrals in books before, and now could finally—albeit bittersweetly—appreciate everything that Harry, Luna, and Neville had said about them. They really were the perfect personification of loss, beautiful and sad in their own way. She wondered how many students returning to Hogwarts had been surprised to learn that the coaches were pulled by these skeletal, winged horses.

As they rumbled along, Hermione thought of Luna. They hadn't found each other at King's Cross Station or on the Hogwarts Express. Maybe Luna had changed her mind about returning to school. She had seemed sure about wanting to come back when Hermione had bumped into her in Diagon Alley, arms full of new textbooks for the upcoming year. Hermione told herself that there was no reason to worry. At least not until she'd had a look around the Great Hall.

Just then, the coach rang with laughter, and Hermione snapped to attention at the sound. Vicky Frobisher, a blond, curly-haired Gryffindor girl in Ginny's year, was talking about the rumoured changes to Hogwarts castle and grounds. Evidently, she'd said something unintentionally funny.

"No, it's true! My mum told me they've added an indoor swimming pool!" Vicky said excitedly. "And they've done away with the dungeons completely."

"You're mum's mental, Vicky," said Ritchie Coote, who Hermione recognized as one of the Gryffindor Quidditch players from years past. He wove his fingers into Vicky's and added, "You're lucky she hasn't run me off yet." The group laughed again, but Hermione didn't get the joke. Were they dating? She supposed they must be.

Ginny said, "We'll know soon enough. I just hope they haven't torn down the Quidditch pitch!" Everyone groaned in agreement except Hermione. She wasn't nearly as passionate about Quidditch as Ginny or the others, but she was sure that the Quidditch pitch would be just fine.

Staring out the window, Hermione let the sound of the others talking wash over her while she waited for Hogwarts to come into view. After another five minutes, they passed through the front gates and the castle loomed over them, as majestic as ever. Hermione searched for differences from the castle she remembered, but, except for a few obvious changes, she couldn't even tell which parts of the castle were original and where they'd made repairs or improvements.

The most obvious addition to the castle was a gargantuan statue of two men dueling in front of the Astronomy Tower. One of the men was cloaked and hooded, the other wore Muggle clothing, and each had their wands pointed directly at the other. Hermione guessed this was the statue that Harry had been complaining about during her last visit to the Burrow. _"They insisted on having me and Riddle on the memorial," _he had said. _"It's a bloody eyesore!" _She could see why he didn't like it.

"Er, Hermione?"

Hermione jumped in her seat, turning back to the group at the sound of her name. Had they been talking to her? She struggled to call to mind what they'd been discussing. "Um—"

"I want to ask you something," said Vicky. Ginny shot her a warning look, which Vicky ignored, and Hermione braced herself. She somehow knew by the tone of Vicky's voice that she was about to ask the first _question._

Hermione had been dreading the inevitable interrogations from her fellow students ever since she'd made the decision to return to Hogwarts, but she'd hoped they would at least have held off until tomorrow. It would have been nice to have one night without being probed and prodded for information. Still, these questions would be following her around all year. No one would be satisfied with the _Prophet_ or _Witch Weekly_ when they had the real thing right in front of them. Hermione supposed that they would all view it as an exciting opportunity to get answers to their burning questions straight from the horse's mouth. And she couldn't exactly avoid her classmates.

Regardless, she had already made up her mind that, however uncomfortable it might be for her, vetting questions from curious students was innumerably better than the incessant exposes in _Witch Weekly _or _Teen Witch_, none of which were even remotely accurate. That was what she was leaving, she reminded herself, gossip columns and rubberneckers and the white-hot spotlight of instant, overwhelming, international fame. At Hogwarts, she would be safe from all of that. Or _safer_.

When Hermione did not reply, Vicky carried on, though the mood in the coach had gone noticeably sour. "Is all that—all those things the _Prophet_'s been writing about you and Ron and Harry—are they true?"

"What things?" Hermione asked coldly. The _Prophet_ had had a _lot_ to say about her, after all, and her friends, too. Did Vicky expect her to just rattle of the list on her fingers, saying "yea" or "nay" to each theory, rumor, and guess?

"Well, what about the H-horcruxes and all? Is it true He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named split his soul?"

"Vicky," said Ginny, "you _know _he had Horcruxes! You heard Harry shouting to Voldemort about it!" Vicky and Ritchie both made valiant attempts not to flinch at the sound of the name. It was still hard for most people to hear "Voldemort" without cringing, but Vicky especially seemed determined not to lose focus on the topic at hand.

"I had blood gushing out of my leg, didn't I?" she snapped back., her wide hazel eyes flashing. "I wasn't exactly paying strict attention."

Hermione's memory of that bleak dawn washed over her vision in vivid detail. She recalled running past Vicky's prone figure on her way out of the Great Hall. Her head had rested on Ritchie's lap, her face contorted in pain as Madam Pomfrey ran her wand over Vicky's mangled leg. Hermione had been so preoccupied with Voldemort's proclamation of Harry's death that she hadn't given the girl whimpering in agony and terror a second thought. Like everyone else who was able, she'd rushed to the great oak doors to witness the impossible truth of her best friend's murder for herself.

For months, Vicky and so many like her were casualties with blurred faces to Hermione. She had not known them. They weren't real to her like her friends, whose many sacrifices were like nails driven into her heart. Now she would have to face them all, all of the students who had stayed to fight for Harry and his cause.

It wouldn't be easy, but Hermione redoubled her resolve to answer their questions as honestly as she could. That was the only way to even begin to repay the debt she owed them for their suffering, their bravery and trust. They deserved answers more than any scandal-hungry newspaper or magazine.

And Vicky had even more of a right than others. She'd fought beside Hermione in the battle that ended a war. Moreover, she'd snuck back into the school grounds with Colin Creevey and a dozen other students deemed too young to face the Death Eaters when she could easily have fled to safety. And she'd paid for it. They all had.

"...want to hear what Hermione has to say about it," Vicky was saying to Ginny when Hermione resurfaced from her thoughts. Ginny, apparently, had been attempting to both explain Horcruxes and shout Vicky down.

"Maybe she doesn't want to talk about it right now, huh? Ever think of that?"

"Ginny, it's fine." Hermione was surprised to hear her voice was level, calm even.

"No, it's completely un—"

"Ginny, I appreciate your coming to my rescue, but, really, it's alright." Ginny looked as though she wanted to say more, but she sat back in her seat with her arms crossed over her chest, blowing her fiery red hair out of her face. Hermione turned her attention to Vicky. "Yes, it's true Tom Riddle split his soul. I destroyed one of the Horcruxes just like the _Prophet_ said. It was the cup—Helga Hufflepuff's cup," she added when Vicky looked confused. "I stabbed it with a Basilisk fang."

Hermione saw the flash of light in her mind's eye, and the black ooze leaking from the twisted metal of the cup. She heard Voldemort's scream, like an echo from the bottom of some deep chasm, reverberating around the Chamber of Secrets.

"You really did that?"

"_Yeah_, she really did that," said Ginny, flaring up at once. "Come on, Vicky, stop it! No more questions tonight."

But Vicky was gazing at Hermione with new respect. "Wow."

Hermione looked down at her hands, blushing. "It's not that impressive."

"It's actually more impressive that the _Prophet_ managed to get something right for once," said Ritchie, which effectively defused some of the tension. "Though I guess with everything they write about you lot, they're bound to publish the truth sometimes." Everyone laughed as the coach came to a jerky halt in front of the school.

Hermione breathed a sigh and ducked out of the coach after Ginny, joining the crowd of students already gathering at the entrance of Hogwarts castle.

She was proud of herself. She'd survived her first bombardment of questions. Even though she knew that more were coming, more curious inquiries to drag her back into memories of the awful past, she took comfort in the fact that, at the very least, there were no statues of _her_ heroics to avoid this year.

* * *

Draco lagged behind the current of students rushing into the Entrance Hall, their footsteps stampeding around in great, booming echoes from the high ceilings and their chattering voices ricocheting off of the massive stone walls. He entered the Great Hall after some giggling second year Ravenclaws and slipped onto a bench at the Slytherin table. Students around him shuffled down the table to avoid sitting next to him and turned their heads to laugh or whisper with their friends, not bothering to mask their disdain. Draco thought miserably that last year he would have been among those scoffing and sneering. He remembered holding court at this table, remembered being the center of attention.

_Well, I'm certainly getting attention_, he thought. _Just not the kind anyone would want._

As he gazed across the House tables, he noticed the Lovegood girl surrounded by admirers at the Ravenclaw table. The celebrity status endowed on all of Potter's pals was formidable in the press. Clearly that status had followed them to Hogwarts.

And then it hit him.

How could he have been so stupid? Of course he had heard of the brilliant Luna Lovegood! Hadn't he sometimes brought her and Ollivander their meals during their time as the brave hostages of his Death Eater family? Hadn't he called her "Loony Lovegood" ever since her first year at Hogwarts? And yet, he'd never put together that the girl he'd bullied and the girl in his cellar were the same person. He'd never even known her proper first name. Draco felt the shame of it burn his cheeks, and his hand seemed to prickle and buzz where he had touched hers.

Why had she shaken his hand? Why had she kept him company on the train all the rest of the way to Hogsmeade? Why had she taken the last coach with him to the castle, all the while never speaking to him or anyone else, and only parting with him at the front doors?

She had every reason to show him censure rather than kindness, but she had bothered to offer him the protection of her presence, all the while knowing that he had no clue what she was doing for him. The angry whispers, the people gaping at him through the train compartment's window, the glares and condemnations of a thousand students had all been nullified, at least for a few hours, by the strange blond girl with the preternatural silence and wide, moonish eyes who'd stood by him without explanation or encouragement.

But _why_? What was her angle? What was the purpose of any of it?

Draco had more questions than answers. Whatever the Lovegood girl's intentions may be, he wasn't going to guess them tonight, so there was no use in being anything other than grateful for her bizarre compassion.

Over at the Ravenclaw table, Luna was flapping her hands in the air around her head as if attempting to beat away a swarm of gnats. He watched her, wondering if she was quite sane, when she caught his eye and mouthed something that looked an awful lot like "Wrackspurts."

So the one person who had shown any kindness to him since he boarded the train was crazy. Brilliant. Draco wondered for the hundredth time if he'd made a mistake in coming back to Hogwarts this year.

Looking for a distraction, his eyes wondered up to the high table where four new faces caught his interest. Two he didn't recognize, one was _definitely _a Weasley, and one looked like the old barman of the Hog's Head who had turned out to be Dumbledore's brother. Just when he was wondering what subject an old blighter like that would teach, the newly-appointed Deputy Headmaster Flitwick appeared with the nervous-looking first years and everyone's attention turned to them. Flitwick walked them down the center aisle, shorter himself that most of the seated students, and came to a stop in front of a little three-footed stool which seemed naked without the Sorting Hat perched on top of it.

Headmistress McGonagall got to her feet and cleared her throat. The rumble of noise in the Great Hall died down, though a low hiss of whispering remained.

"Welcome, students and staff, to another year at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. As you may know, our beloved Sorting Hat suffered serious damage during the battle which occurred here earlier this year. It is now taking a well-deserved sabbatical under the care of Madam Pomfrey and is therefore unable to sort this year's students." The murmuring intensified and McGonagall raised her hands for quiet.

"However, the staff and I have created what we hope is an appropriate substitute for this year. Aberforth, if you would..." She gestured to the barman, who stood up and made his way down to Flitwick. "Mr. Dumbledore has agreed to allow us the use of his brother's splendid wizard's hat. Thank you!" She led the Great Hall in a round of applause. A few students even stood in ovation as the man handed off the sky blue, spangled hat to Flitwick, smiled at the applauding crowd, and returned to his seat. Flitwick set the slightly rumpled hat onto the stool and took a few steps back. Everyone waited.

Then, with Albus Dumbledore's voice, a voice that stuck Draco like a knife through his memory, the hat began to sing:

_In keeping with tradition, _

_As was in days before,_

_A hat which sorts the students_

_Will settle still the score._

_While maybe less bedraggled _

_By age and length of time,_

_I'm just as suitable, you'll see,_

_To sort you and to rhyme. _

_However sorrows weigh you_

_In the aftermath of strife,_

_Remember what was given_

_So that you may have this life._

_And do not mourn the passing _

_Of those we cannot hold,_

_But keep your neighbors closer_

_In these Houses forged of old:_

_If brave of deed, then Gryffindor_

_Where boldness is the quest;_

_Or to Ravenclaw, where cleverness_

_Is prized above the rest;_

_To Hufflepuff if kindness _

_And hard work's where you are strongest;_

_Or then Slytherin, whose cunning _

_Guile has aided them the longest._

_Gallant Lion, subtle Snake,_

_It's time to make amends._

_Wise Eagle and good Badger, _

_Recall we all are friends._

_Though in the past we've broken ties,_

_Our paths have gone astray,_

_We must seek to forgive all those_

_Who've fought against this day. _

_Sitting here, I see you all _

_Together and anew;_

_While many sought to destroy love,_

_It helped to guide us through._

_So lay down the awful enmity_

_Which once rent friends apart._

_Use your brains and, above all else,_

_Find love within your hearts. _

The Great Hall erupted into wild applause again. Draco saw the Weasley girl, Ginny, standing on her seat as the whole Gryffindor table whopped and cheered louder than any other House. Dumbledore's hat bowed its peak to each House table in turn, and then became still. Flitwick stepped forward again and withdrew from his robes the list of names to be sorted. He waited for most of the clapping to abate before adjusting his glasses a little farther down his nose and calling, "Adderbose, Letholdus!"

A grinning, sturdy-looking boy strutted up to the stool and sat down. Flitwick reached to place the hat on his head, though he had barely managed to perch it there before the hat shouted "Gryffindor!" and Letholdus strode off to join his cheering House table.

Draco watched as "Ambrose, Ellyn" and "Bach, Linus" were both sorted into Hufflepuff, and he chuckled to himself, thanking his lucky stars that, regardless of the depths to which he had recently sunk, _at least_ he wasn't in Hufflepuff.

Just then, he felt a searing pain on his neck and smacked his hand to it as if it were a bee sting. When he pulled his hand away, however, he saw flecks of blood and ash on his palm. Draco whirled around in his seat to see two seventh-year Slytherin boys, Harper and Vaisey, cackling viciously. Searching for a reflective surface, Draco grabbed his polished silver plate and angled it so he could see the back of his neck. It took him a moment to decipher the backwards letters scorched there, just above the cord of the necklace concealed beneath his robes.

The letters spelled "FINK".

Harper was visibly struggling for breath through his guffawing and Vaisey leaned on Harper for support, dabbing at the corners of his eyes with the sleeve of his robes. Other Slytherins were glaring over their shoulders at the two boys still trying to stifle their sniggering as the rest of the table clapped for "Greene, Christopher," who had just become a Slytherin. Feeling even worse than before, Draco bunched his robes up around his throbbing neck and tried to pay attention to the Sorting.

* * *

Hermione yanked Ginny back down as she attempted to climb up onto her seat again while "Ops, Larunda" positively skipped over to the Gryffindor table.

Hermione gazed up at the newly restored ceiling reflecting the velvety black sky studded with stars and thought of all the duels fought in the Great Hall less than six months ago. Not a single trace of rubble remained, and yet she felt as though she were sitting in a ruin. She supposed that the nagging feeling that she didn't belong would fade once classes began. She could slip into a routine, lose herself in grades and homework.

"Hermione," said Ginny, poking her in the ribs, "clap!" A tall, freckle-faced boy was making his way over the Gryffindor table to sit beside Letholdus Adderbose, the same boy Hermione had seen being interviewed at King's Cross earlier that day. She watched him shake hands with the freckle-faced boy, a grin still hitched onto his face.

Finally, "Yulvik, Otto" became a Ravenclaw, and Flitwick took the hat from him as the Great Hall stormed with applause.

Hermione watched the tiny professor charm the three-legged stool to float before him toward the high table, then turned her attention to Headmistress McGonagall as she stood once again, her severe gaze demanding respect.

"In the words of Albus Dumbledore," McGonagall said, "'tuck in!'" She beamed around at them before sitting down. Food appeared in the empty dishes on every table, and Hermione suddenly realized how hungry she was. As she piled mashed potatoes and beef casserole onto her plate, she listened to Ginny's conversation with Nearly Headless Nick, the Gryffindor ghost, as they discussed the castle's renovations.

"Well, they've done a good deal to the place, you know," Nick was saying. "I myself oversaw the re-stitching if the tapestries in Gryffindor tower."

Ginny swallowed a mouthful of steak and kidney pie and asked, "Did they manage to fix that vanishing step on the staircase to—"

"I'd rather not talk about it," Nick interjected. "Nasty incident with Peeves, I'm afraid."

Hermione lost the thread of the conversation when Andrew Kirke asked her to pass the pork chops, and she began to wonder why Hestia Jones and Percy Weasley were sitting at the high table. None of the Weasleys had mentioned to her that Percy would be here, let alone, as she suspected, filling a teaching post.

There was also another witch who she had never seen before sitting to the left of Professor Slughorn, the Potions master. Hermione noticed Hagrid trying to catch her eye and returned his wave with a cheerfulness she didn't entirely feel. She hadn't seen him since Remus and Tonks' funeral.

Hermione forced herself to think about something else.

Nearly Headless Nick was assuring Ginny's friend Vicky that the dungeons were perfectly intact and that there was definitely no indoor swimming pool. "The Bloody Baron was very particular about the dungeons, as a matter of fact. And then the Grey Lady wanted just as many changes to Ravenclaw Tower. The pair of them drove the staff to within an inch of reason." Nick adjusted his ruff thoughtfully and added, "I've never seen either of them so happy."

Very soon, the puddings were served, and just when everyone was beginning to feel sleepy, the Headmistress rose a third time and motioned for silence. "If I could please have your attention for a few start-of-term announcements," she said, her voice seeming to hitch a little as she spoke. "First years, be advised that the forest on the grounds is out of bounds. Also, Mister Filch, the caretaker, has asked me to remind you that no magic of any sort is permitted in the corridors between classes and that there is a blanket ban on all Weasley Wizard Wheezes products. Any prohibited items found will be confiscated." Ginny giggled. Up at the staff table, Percy tried and failed to disguise a grin.

"We have three changes of staff this year," McGonagall continued. "We are delighted to welcome Professor Weasley, who will be taking over my old post as Transfiguration teacher; Professor Hitchens, who will be assuming the Muggle Studies post; and Professor Jones, who has kindly consented to lend her considerable talents to our Defense Against the Dart Arts lessons.

"And finally, students, I would like to take this time to thank the staff for all of their hard work to make Hogwarts fit for educating again and to ask you all to join me in a moment of silence to remember those who were lost during the battle which took place right here on Hogwarts grounds."

For a full two minutes, the Great Hall held its breath. No clang of fork on plate, nor any scuffle of feet on the stone floor, nor a single whisper broke the absolute stillness. Images of Fred Weasley and Colin Creevey and a dozen other glass-eyed corpses crept into Hermione's mind. She blinked, but the blood and fire and the tear-streaked, dirty faces of child warriors wouldn't sink below the surface of her consciousness.

She stared around the Great Hall for a distraction, and there was Malfoy with his head hung low so that his white-blond hair cast his face into shadow. Hermione's eyes narrowed, her animosity toward him filling her, drowning out memories of the past. He didn't deserve to share these minutes of remembrance with the rest of the school. He didn't deserve to be here at all. How could McGonagall allow him, a criminal and a traitor, to come back under _any_ circumstances? She must know it wasn't safe—not for him and not for anyone else. Even if he kept his head down all year, which was bloody unlikely, his mere presence was bound to cause trouble.

Hermione studied Malfoy as though seeing him would make him disappear. His hands clutched something—a piece of paper, maybe—and his robes bunched up around him like the wings of a vulture. There was at least a foot of empty bench on either side of him. The other Slytherins leaned away from him. He was dangerous. Everyone knew it.

As if he sensed her watching, Malfoy looked up. Their eyes met for a moment and something exquisite, like pain forged in grief, drove itself into Hermione's chest. She felt her stomach tighten, her breath catch in her throat, the sinews of her body coiling inexorably around the dagger of his gaze... Then he closed his eyes.

The feeling passed. She took a shallow breath. Something tickled her cheek. She reached up to wipe the tear away.

"Thank you," McGonagall said, and her voice cut through the silence. "To bed now, all of you!" There was a sudden din of scraping and banging. The school rose to its feet as one and began tussling toward the exit, and Hermione forgot her moment with Malfoy as she and Ginny were swallowed by a sea of admirers.

* * *

**A/N**: You got a new chapter a few days early because I will be out of town on Sunday. I hope you enjoyed it! Don't forget to review! —Abbs


	3. Chapter 3

**Disclaimer: _Harry Potter_ is property of J.K. Rowling and Warner Bros Entertainment Inc. This story is not written for profit and no copyright infringement is intended.**

* * *

**Part I: A Lonely Heart Cannot Atone**

**Chapter 3**

* * *

In years past, hardly anyone received mail on the first day back. After all, students had been away from home for less than twenty-four hours. At most, a few people got Rememberalls or newspapers. So, when hundreds owls came swooping through the high windows of the Great Hall on Monday morning, everyone was surprised.

Some might have chalked it up to extenuating circumstances—lots of parents were nervous about sending their kids off to school so soon after the end of the war and would be understandably anxious to keep in touch. More people had taken out subscriptions of the _Daily Prophet_ as well, a habit many of the older students had picked up during the war. Hermione could see more brightly-coloured _Witch Weekly_ and _Teen Witch_ magazines finding their way to their subscribers, too, and was dismayed to find that so many girls were loyal readers of Patience Bright.

But far more numerous than the delivery owls with their newspapers and letters from home were the owls making their way to four people in the Great Hall in particular: Hermione, Ginny, Luna, and Draco Malfoy.

Flocking around her where she sat with Ginny and her friends at the Gryffindor table, the owls flapped their wings and jostled for position, each trying to deliver their letters before the other. They made an awful mess, splashing around the breakfast dishes while they pecked and hooted at each other.

Hermione tried to detach the letters from their respective owl legs as quickly as possible, shooing each one in turn. As curious as she was, long experience prompted her to wait until all of the owls were gone before she tried to make sense of any of it.

An owl delivering her copy of the _Daily Prophet_ shuffled forward importantly and accepted her knut before taking flight. Hermione glanced at the headline of the _Prophet _("Students' Return to School Heralds a New Era") and had almost begun to read the accompanying article when an impatient barn owl nipped her finger, jarring her back to the task at hand.

"Go on!" she heard Ginny say beside her. "I've got your letter, now bugger off!" Hermione couldn't see Ginny through the many feathered bodies between them, but she could tell the redhead was every bit as frustrated with this daily ritual as Hermione was.

One by one, they plucked their letters, stacking them around their plates or on the bench, until the last of the owls was gone. As soon as she had a moment to look, she glanced over at Luna, who was already reading the latest copy of _The Quibbler_ as she nibbled on a piece of bacon. Her pile consisted of about twenty letters. She was ignoring them completely, and Hermione wondered if Luna even read her fanmail.

Across the Great Hall, Malfoy sat alone again conjuring bubbles around steaming red envelopes then tapping them again and placing them one on top of the other on the empty bench beside him. He had a great pile of bubbles encasing Howlers, some of which had already gone off and were screaming silently in their soap bubble cages.

Hermione knew there was no silencing a Howler. One couldn't vanish it or destroy it or do anything to stop it until it had finished its business and burned itself up. Malfoy had found a way around this, obviously: cast a bubble around the Howler and place a Silencing Charm—no, a Quietening Charm; Silencing Charms only worked on living things—on the bubble instead. Very clever. No matter how many Howlers he got, he never had to bear the shame of the whole school overhearing what exactly the general public felt about him.

Hermione wasn't sure she liked that Malfoy had beaten a system of punishment she felt he rightly deserved. On the other hand, she could honestly say she was grateful that Malfoy had found a way around daily Howlers, at least for the sake of his fellow students' sanity. No one would want to eat breakfast to a chorus of livid hate mail every morning, no matter how justified that hate mail may be.

Hermione turned her attention back to her fanmail. Ginny was already opening hers with the kind of caution they'd both learned to exercise. Just because the letters were from fans didn't mean their contents couldn't be very unpleasant. One time, Hermione had gotten toenail clippings and a treatise on why body-snatching and the use of Polyjuice Potion were morally reprehensible. The woman had dared Hermione to masquerade as _her_ for the day. Hermione, for obvious reasons, had declined. Besides, she knew from experience that it was ill-advised to add unconfirmed ingredients to a Polyjuice Potion.

Another time, something oily and black had oozed from the envelope, accompanied a soggy explanation of the goo as a homemade hair relaxer to aid Hermione in her "ongoing battle with her unwieldy locks." Hermione had cleaned up the mess amid peals of laughter from Ron and Harry, and was careful to avoid touching the goo.

And it wasn't all so tame either. She'd received her share of Howlers from angry fans, fans who expected prompt replies to their rambling letters or who thought her supposed bad behavior, as reported by the gossip columns, was unbecoming of a war heroine. She'd gotten death threats from people before and letters much more ominous than those she'd received in her fourth year during her war with Rita Skeeter.

Still, most days she felt a compulsion to at least read the letters she received from fans. She wanted to know their thoughts, to know the people who wanted to know her. It was all pretty baffling, and Hermione often half-convinced herself that she was crazy to open a single letter from these strangers who already monopolized so much of her time. She didn't do it for herself. Even if she hardly ever wrote back, she told herself that she read all her fanmail because it was her responsibility.

Ginny shook something that looked like several half-melted brownies onto the table and groaned. "Why do they send food?"

Hermione grimaced, remembering the time someone had sent Harry a full banquet in an enormous pink box. From the roast beef to the strawberry tart, every dish had been in the shape of a heart. By comparison, Ginny and Hermione's fans were positively boring.

There sure were a lot of strange people in the world.

Ginny giggled then and handed Hermione the letter she'd been reading. It said,

_A Phoenix is red_

_And Pixies are blue_

_Here are some brownies_

_I baked them for you._

Hermione gave Ginny her letter back. "A poet. Lucky you."

"I know. I have the best fans." It was a game Ginny liked to play. No matter how insane her fanmail was, she always insisted that the people mailing her letters were far superior to the people mailing everyone else letters. Hermione couldn't really argue with her; Ginny hardly ever got Howlers.

Hermione shook open a mint green piece of paper and began to read.

_Hermione Granger,_

_We're all very grateful for everything you did in the war. I just want to know why you think that entitles you to try to tempt Harry Potter away from Ginny Weasley. They're perfect for each other! PERFECT! _

_You don't deserve Harry. Let him be happy, would you?_

_Regards,_

_Gabby Preston_

Hermione looked up at Ginny, who held an identical green paper in her hands. "What's going on?" she asked.

"No idea," Ginny said. "This Gabby Preston person just told me to watch my back because you're trying to nick Harry right out from under my nose." Ginny tried her best to make a straight face. "Is that true, Hermione?"

Hermione rolled her eyes. "I couldn't pry Harry away from you if I tried."

Ginny's expression clearly said, "You're damn right."

Setting aside Gabby Preston's letter, Hermione opened another with a similar sentiment. And another.

"Alright," she said after the sixth letter asserting that she should mind her own business ("You slag!") and that Harry and Ginny would be better off without her in their lives ("Isn't his friendship enough for you?"), "which one did it?"

If they were both getting mail about Hermione supposedly trying to steal Harry away from Ginny, it could only mean one thing: either _Witch Weekly _or _Teen Witch _had published some fresh "scoop" on a "scandal."

Ginny's gaze roamed around the table for a moment before she snatched a _Teen Witch: Special Edition_ out of Vicky's hand. "Let's have a look."

While Vicky made noises of protestation, Ginny thumbed through the magazine to "The Dish." The headline read "Hermione Steals the Scene—And Harry's Attention." Hermione and Ginny read the article together.

_Though she told us she'd sworn off dating earlier this summer, Platform 9 ¾ was a tearful farewell for all as Hermione's true feelings for Harry finally won out. Ignoring Ron, her rumored squeeze, Hermione's torrid embrace of The Boy Who Lived was so tight that he was nearly The Boy Who Suffocated. _

_Not so great for best gal pal Ginny, who fumed in the background with the rest of the Weasley family. (Spotted: Fleur looking her usual ravishing self in a sweet azure sheath dress for fall from Witch's Brew with hunky husband Bill in tow. Who needs accessories when you've got _him_ on your arm!) _

_When it comes to Harry, though, you can't blame a girl for trying. After all, it's up to fiery Ginny to keep her man if she wants him. And it looks like Hermione's got some pent up emotions to get out, especially after her run-in with a certain slimy someone (pictured below) who arrived just in time to knock our Ms. Granger off her feet!_

_Sparks all around at the station yesterday. We'll see which ones catch fire._

Hermione glared down at the picture that accompanied the column. There she was with Malfoy, his cart with empty owl cage and trunk beside him, and Crookshanks' wicker carrier thrashing around on the platform. She and Malfoy seemed to be shouting vehemently at one another, though there was no sound to accompany the photo. As she watched, her pictured self drew her wand and Malfoy threw up his hands in frustration and sat down on his trunk, which slid backwards a bit as the cart rolled toward the edge of the picture.

One of the cameramen present at the station must have taken a picture of Draco running into her with his cart without Hermione even realizing it. It was a small consolation, but Hermione was proud, at least, that her picture-self refused to play out the scene for the benefit of "The Dish"'s readership.

"No wonder," Ginny said, and Hermione looked up at her in confusion. "Look at the cover."

Hermione turned the magazine over. The whole cover was taken up with a picture of Hermione hugging Harry goodbye. Over and over, the picture version of her threw her arms around Harry and they swayed on the spot. It was a friendly embrace, one of two people who had shared a great deal with each other, but Hermione couldn't bring herself to see anything romantic in it. She just didn't feel that way about Harry. He was like a brother—closer even, like a part of herself. _Teen Witch _had warped their innocent goodbye into something else entirely.

"There's no point in reading the rest of this," Hermione said, dropping the magazine and sifting through the other letters for the names of friends. There were none, only dozens of letters from fans eager to weigh in on _Teen Witch'_s latest bit of contrived drama. "It's just going to be more about this guff."

"Agreed," said Ginny. They each vanished the rest of their letters.

"So, can I have my magazine back now?" Vicky asked, holding out her hand for her _Teen Witch_.

Looking disgusted, Ginny gave the magazine back to Vicky. "How can you read that trash?"

"I like it. I like the fashions. And not everything in there is about you two, you know. There's other stuff." Vicky did not elaborate, and neither Ginny nor Hermione bothered to ask. Vicky went back to her breakfast and her article in _Teen Witch _with a little frown.

Hermione tried to eat. She spread jam onto a piece of toast and brought it to her mouth only to toss it onto her plate. She was too frustrated to be hungry.

"Hey," Ginny said, bumping Hermione's shoulder with her own, "don't be upset. Harry and Ron probably don't even know about any of this. It's not like they prance around reading _Teen Witch_ in their copious free time, you know."

It was a funny image, but Hermione couldn't bring herself to laugh. "It's just so ridiculous!"

"Yeah, it's bloody ridiculous!" said Ginny. "Of course it is. It always is! But we were all there. We all saw what happened, and even if we hadn't, we would still know it was a load of bollocks."

Hermione nodded and looked up just in time to see Professor Jones, the new Gryffindor Head of House, coming down the row with their new course schedules. Giving Ginny a brief smile, Hermione picked up her toast again and ordered herself to eat. It was going to be a long day—week, year, _decade—_and she wasn't going to prove anything by starving herself.

* * *

The first week of school was not pleasant for Draco. Howlers continued to arrive only to be silenced then vanished. Teachers ignored him, which wasn't so bad, but the behavior of his fellow students was everything he'd dreaded and worse. Not only did he have to endure name-calling from the ever-predictable Gryffindors, his own House, Slytherin, disdained him as well.

It wasn't that he was shunned by the Slytherin in-crowd; he had known already that his popularity was in negative numbers. It was that, for the first time, Draco was on the receiving end of exactly the kind of torture that he was infamous for dolling out.

After countless applications of the Jelly-Legs Jinx, two accidental ingestions of Nosebleed Nougat which were hidden in his food, and the mysterious disappearance of most of his school uniforms, Draco had decided to cast protective charms on whatever he could to keep his property and himself safe.

Draco warded his four-poster bed against intruders. He magically sealed his trunk with a Locking Charm, adding an Imperturbable Charm while he was at it. He did his homework in a lonely corner of the Library and came down late to almost all meals, making sure that Vaisey and Harper were gone before he sat down at the far end of the Slytherin table to eat.

But it was only getting worse. The Slytherins, at least, were not content with dung bombs and the usual joke jinxes. They were becoming exponentially more ruthless by the day.

Draco had just stepped out of double Charms on the Friday following the start of term, distracted with cramming his textbook into his over-full bookbag, when he ran headlong into Vaisey.

"Here he is," Vaisey said to Harper in an undertone, smacking him on the shoulder to get his attention. Harper turned his leering, spotty face to Draco.

They both seemed excited to see him, almost as though they'd been waiting for him after class. That would be a first. They hadn't actually sought him out before. He was usually only subjected to their sadism if there didn't happen to be any fresher prey around at the time. He was, after all, a boring target. He never fought back. He never played their game.

Draco had only moments to ruminate on this sinister turn of events, however, as the two boys were advancing on him, their combined hulk barring his way.

"Watch where you're going, fink!" growled Vaisey.

"Yeah, Malfoy," said Harper. He cracked his knuckles ominously. "Effing fink. Watch where you're going!"

Draco suppressed the urge to say something like "I don't think that word means what you think it means." Now was not the time to be glib and it wasn't as though he needed to understand their insults to know their intent.

Rather than reply, Draco tried to sidestep the two boys. They were both bigger than him, though they were a year behind him in school. Draco was forcibly reminded of younger versions of Crabbe and Goyle.

His consternation at the memory of his former friends must have shown on his face, because Vaisey jeered, "What's the matter, Malfoy? Nothing to say now?"

No, Draco didn't have anything to say. What could he say? If he quipped, his humour would be lost on them. If he fought or used magic, he could be expelled. If he tried to get away, they would call him a coward and attack him all the more.

He just stood there, feeling cornered, as people began to gather around them. The crowd was mostly made up of Slytherins from Charms and Ravenclaws coming up from classes on the first and second floor on their way to their common room before dinner. He had no friends among them, or anywhere in the whole school for that matter.

"You're pathetic, Malfoy! You're a disgrace to Slytherins," Vaisey said, and he spat on the floor.

_This is very bad,_ Draco thought. He knew where this was headed, and he couldn't see a way out. He moved to leave again. Harper blocked his path.

"Don't," muttered Draco, but it was half-hearted at best.

"What are you going to do, fink? _Pay me off?"_ Harper laughed and Vaisey joined in, though Draco doubted he got the joke.

"Why don't you call Potter and have _him_ save you, Malfoy, huh?" Vaisey smacked Draco's bookbag out of his hands. It landed with a dull thump on the stone floor of the corridor, its contents scattering, but Vaisey had jerked his hand away with a yelp. "Flagrante Curse, Malfoy?" He shook his hand in the air, trying to soothe the burns to his palm and fingers. "What, you afraid we'll take your bag like we did your clothes?"

Harper pushed Draco, and he stumbled back into someone else, who pushed him forward again. Vaisey and Harper laughed.

"I don't need magic to teach this fink a lesson," said Harper.

Draco sneered, a tiny bit of his old self resurfacing. _Let him try. Let him hit me_, he thought. Harper pushed Draco again.

"Wipe that grin off your face, you nancy little prat, you traitor!"

Draco's head snapped up at this, and he looked Harper right in the eyes. It was clear to him that there wasn't going to be a peaceful resolution to this conflict. They had worked themselves up now, and they were going to try to hurt him. The only way out was through.

So be it. Draco braced himself.

Harper smiled viciously. "This is going to be fun," he said, and he shoved Draco hard into the wall, coming at him almost faster than Draco could react, but Harper's fist hit stone instead of flesh as Draco ducked out of the way. Harper's cry of pain was cut short as Draco's shoulder connected with his chest, plowing him all the way into the wall at the opposite side of the corridor. People were moving out the way, re-forming into a circle. No one lifted a fingers to help, to stop it. He was on his own.

Draco pounded his fist into Harper's stomach. Harper doubled over with a grunt, and Draco drew his wand. He was ready. He raised it to do he know not what when—

"_Bombarda!_" roared Vaisey. The last thing Draco heard was a communal gasp from the crowd before a jet of violently red light blasted into his back.

He dropped to his knees in writhing agony, red spots popping in his vision, blinding him. Time slowed to a crawl as a thousand strands of barbed wire burrowed through every pore, every vein of his body, as even the air against his blistering back grated like sandpaper on sunburned skin and the smell of singed hair and flesh filled his nostrils. His wand fell from his hand and rolled into the forest of feet in front of him.

"_Petrificus Totalus!" _

The unbearable pain only intensified as Draco froze and slumped rigidly forward. His face hit the stone floor with a crunch, and blood gushed into his mouth and onto the floor unabated to join the pool of charred crimson blossoming under his torso. Then Vaisey and Harper were kicking him anywhere they could. Each blow felt like his insides were exploding anew with pain.

The cold silence of unconsciousness wove between the murmurs from the crowd and the heavy, wet-sounding thuds of Vaisey and Harper's feet connecting with Draco's body. Blackness crept into the edges of his vision.

"STOP!" A pair of Mary-Janes shuffled through the crowd of shoes and came to a stop near his head. He could hear more footsteps behind him._"Finite Incantatem!"_ a girl's voice said. Draco's body collapsed, free of the body-bind curse.

"_Expelliarmus!"_ It was a different voice this time, but still a girl. "Get up, Malfoy! Wait—Merlin, look at him! What did they _do_ to him?! _Rennervate!"_

Draco felt life rush back into him, and the pain came again, sharp and deep. His near-unconsciousness had dulled his senses, but now he was alert and feverish with agony. As he coughed and spit mouthfuls of blood onto the floor, it was all he could do not to scream.

"Oh God, oh God," the second girl said under her breath in a long, unbroken string of panic, and she shuffled around him with uneven steps as if trying to decide how or if to proceed. Her trepidation steadied him; he might be dying, but at least he wasn't the most hysterical person in the corridor.

"Hermione, calm down. The rest of you, shove off!" commanded the first girl. "Show's over! GO! NOW!"

Draco got to his hands and knees, his body numbing with shock now, still struggling to catch his breath. He felt like his lungs were filling with water, like he was drowning. He looked up to see the Weasley girl, her wand pointed at the wandless Vaisey and Harper, the latter of whom was laving his busted and bleeding lip with his tongue.

Granger was there, too, standing over Draco, holding Vaisey's and Harper's wands in one hand and brandishing her own wand in the other. The last of the crowd retreated down the corridor, whispering and stealing glances over their shoulders.

"Right," said Weasley, "fifty points from Slytherin for fighting. Each." She glanced down at Draco as she said it. He took this to mean that she was including him as well, but he didn't much care at the moment. "You two can get your wands back from Headmistress McGonagall. Now get out of here!" Vaisey and Harper ran off down the hall, clutching their bookbags and readjusting their cloaks as they went.

Now Draco was left with just the two Gryffindors. It was very quiet. He could hear his pulse pounding in his ears, feel the blood seeping from his back and face. In a daze, Draco rolled back into a kneeling position and tried to wipe away some of the blood on his face with his sleeve, but his already soaked shirt just spread the blood around. What little air he could breathe in smelled of coppery blood and burnt hair.

He tried to concentrate on one point on the ground. Cracks in the stone floor came in and out of sharp focus, and Draco swayed where he knelt as if hypnotized.

"You need Madam Pomfrey," he heard Granger say. She stowed her wand in her robes and crouched beside him to get a better look at his face. "Ginny, take these wands to McGonagall. I'll get Malfoy to the Hospital Wing." Weasley stared down at Draco with an inscrutable expression as she accepted the wands from Granger.

"Okay, Hermione," the Weasley girl said, but she didn't move. There was a long moment when Draco thought she might start kicking him as well, but then she turned on her heel and marched off down the hall. "You'd better hurry," she said over her shoulder. "He looks awful."

Now he was alone with Granger.

"Can you stand?" she asked after a moment. Her voice was softer, low but cautious. Draco nodded, and she helped him to his feet, her fingers pressing into the bruise of his body. Draco hissed but otherwise forced himself to bear the pain without complaint.

They started for the Hospital Wing which was, mercifully, on the same floor. "Thank God we don't have far to go," she said. "I don't think you could make it up stairs."

"M-my wand," sputtered Draco. Every breath cost him; his greatest worry was that he might faint.

Granger pulled out her own wand. "_Accio _Malfoy's wand!" It flew at her and she caught it rather clumsily.

"And—and my bag," he wheezed, coughing up blood. He wanted to warn her not to touch it, warn her about the Flagrante Curse, but he couldn't manage it.

"Oh, for Pete's sake." She stopped and turned awkwardly to look back where his bookbag and school things were splayed near the entrance to the Charms classroom. Granger pointed her wand at the bag and it vanished. "It'll meet us there," she explained. "Now let's go."

* * *

"Merlin's beard! Mister Malfoy! What—Miss Granger—" Madam Pomfrey seemed at a loss for words as Hermione hobbled into the Hospital Wing supporting a semi-conscious Malfoy. The flustered witch helped Hermione the rest of the way to the nearest bed, and they lowered Malfoy onto it together.

"Madam Pomfrey—" Hermione began, but stopped short as Madam Pomfrey rolled a white linen partition between them, blocking Hermione's view of Malfoy in the hospital bed.

"I'm sorry, dear, but you'll need to give me a moment with him," came Madam Pomfrey's voice from the other side of the partition. "I need to—there. Oh dear, punctured lung, broken ribs, cracked collarbone... I'll have to use Skele-Gro. And this burn on your back is going to need Dittany."

"Will he be alright?"

"Oh yes, dear. Nothing I can't mend. But he'll have to stay the night."

"Well then, I'll just—"

"Miss Granger," Madam Pomfrey snapped from out of sight, "you will wait where you are."

So Hermione waited, listening to Madam Pomfrey muttering to herself. Every so often, a bottle would zoom in from her office and disappear behind the partition. Malfoy didn't seem to be conscious. Or, at least, he wasn't making his usual fuss.

_Apparently,_ Hermione thought ruefully, _all it takes to shut Malfoy up is a punctured lung._ She wished she'd known that years ago.

Soon Madam Pomfrey came to join Hermione on her side of the partition. As she approached Hermione, however, the nurse gave a little cry of shock. "My dear, that blood! Are you hurt?"

Hermione looked down. Blood, drips and splatters of it, was slowly drying on the dark fabric of her robes and jumper. Smears of rusty red covered her arms, her hands, her hair.

"None of it's mine," Hermione said dazedly. She forced herself to swallow her nausea.

Madam Pomfrey looked upset. "Well, if you're sure," she said, conjuring a towelette from midair and cleaning the worst of it from Hermione's skin is a routine sort of way. "In any case, I shall have to call for Minerva."

Hermione had expected that. Madam Pomfrey tucked the bloody towelette and her wand into her robes and crossed to the fireplace near the door to her office. Once there, she lifted a jar of what Hermione knew to be Floo powder from the mantle. As Madam Pomfrey knelt on the pristine hearth, Hermione edged towards the side of the partition. She waited until the other witch's head had disappeared into green flames before she peered around the partition to get a look at Malfoy.

His pale face was turned toward her, but his eyes were closed and he lay on his stomach with his arms at his sides. Madam Pomfrey hadn't pulled the covers over his bare back, which was thick and swollen with large red splotches, the beginnings of nasty bruises and warped, twisted new skin. His labored breathing was shallow and rattling. Despite these things, he seemed peaceful, blissfully unaware of how his body struggled.

A necklace of plain black cord hung over the side of the bed and two aged keys swung in a slow pendulum rhythm from it. Hermione tried not to feel too curious about this (people wore necklaces, after all). Regardless, she was distracted almost immediately by the cuts on his knuckles. He had tried to fight back. Of course he had. What surprised her is that he had resorted to Muggle means to do it.

She took a few tentative steps toward Malfoy, wary yet weirdly fascinated. She hadn't seen anyone look like this since...

"Miss Granger!" snapped Madam Pomfrey, and Hermione spun around in alarm. "What do you think you are doing?!"

"I'm sorry, Madam Pomfrey! I was just going to put his wand on the table." Hermione hurriedly pulled Malfoy's wand from a pocket in her robes. She showed it to Madam Pomfrey, who was looking stern, then placed it on the nightstand.

"Mm-_hm!_ Miss Granger—" but just then Headmistress McGonagall entered the Hospital Wing and Madam Pomfrey and Hermione hurried out from behind the partition to meet her.

"Are you alight?" asked McGonagall at once. Her eyes roved over Hermione's bloody clothes.

Hermione shifted uncomfortably. "The blood is all Malfoy's. I'm fine, Headmistress."

"Good," McGonagall said, her stiff shoulders relaxing a little. "What happened?"

"I don't know exactly, Headmistress. I was talking to Professor Flitwick after Charms with Ginny Weasley, and when we came out, there was a crowd of people and Malfoy was fighting some Slytherin boys."

"Atticus Vaisey and Dennis Harper, yes. Ginny has been to see me. Where was Professor Flitwick during all of this?"

"He'd just stepped into the fireplace for Per—I mean, Professor Weasley's classroom. Something about a singing chalkboard?"

"Yes, it's been doing that all day," McGonagall replied absently. "And not very well, I might add."

When McGonagall didn't elaborate, Hermione said, "That's really all I know, Headmistress."

She wanted to get away from the Hospital Wing as fast as she could. The smell of burnt flesh and cleansing potions was like a lead balloon pushing against her lungs and heart and stomach. Tt was hard to breathe. Malfoy's blood on her robes and skin was acid. She shook with the need to wash it, to scrub it off, to be clean again.

"Well, thank you, Miss Granger," McGonagall said, and Hermione heard her as if from a great distance. "You did a good thing bringing him here. I suppose you may leave."

Hermione nodded, swallowing hard, and hurried out of the double doors of the Hospital Wing.

* * *

**A/N**: I couldn't wait to post it. Maybe I'll move posting nights for _Jury of Hearts_ to Fridays. What do you think?

Thank you so much for reading, and don't forget to review!

—Abbs


	4. Chapter 4

**Disclaimer: _Harry Potter_ is property of J.K. Rowling and Warner Bros Entertainment Inc. This story is not written for profit and no copyright infringement is intended.**

* * *

**Part I: A Lonely Heart Cannot Atone**

**Chapter 4**

* * *

_Two little boys play Exploding Snap in the rubble of the Great Hall. One is thin and blond with sharp, haughty features. The other is large; his round face and thick neck glisten with sweat. The blond boy can see that his opponent is having trouble holding his cards in his chubby fingers. He bends them, compensating for his lack of dexterity by gripping them over-tight. Or perhaps he is afraid they will explode. Perhaps he is afraid of letting go._

"_Your turn," says Draco. The fat boy grimaces down at the cards in his hand, then at the cards face-down on the ground in front of them. He taps one of face-down cards, then another. _Snap!

_A log falls in the parlour fireplace. It is so dark and the spray of sparks is so blindingly bright that Draco nearly forgets to tremble in terror at Voldemort's high, ringing voice.  
_

"_Do it, or feel my wrath yourself!"_

"_Bugger," says the other boy, flapping his hand to cool the burn. "Your go."_

_Draco chooses two cards. Again, they do not match. _Snap!

"Incendio!" _Thorfinn Rowle's curse strikes true, and the half-giant Hagrid's hut bursts into flame, bathing them all in hot orange light. _

_Snape told him to run, but his voice carries back to Draco's ear."No Unforgivable Curses from you, Potter!"_

_The fat boy grins. "My turn." _Snap!

_Crabbe is screaming, and the sound is high, keening. It carries over the deafening roar of flame. His flesh is eaten away by ember and ash. He is faceless, choking, gone. Whatever is left of him is devoured by Fiendfyre._

"_C-Crabbe..."_

_Weasley sits next to Goyle's unconscious body, panting, his voice harsh. "He's dead." _

_Draco looks up at the boy across from him, but there is only the melted, smouldering corpse that was Crabbe smiling back. It opens its mouth to speak, blood boiling over its lips. "You next."_

_Draco lurches backward, cards flying, exploding in midair. "No!"_

"Oh, you're awake. Good afternoon."

Draco blinked in the bright sunlight, his dream still fresh and very real, his head pounding and his mouth dry. He turned his head a fraction of an inch, trying to see who had spoken, and his whole body erupted into one throbbing, knife-like bruise. He used to pain to try and focus. It was a dream. Just a dream. Only a dream.

But then what was he doing... Where was he?

"Don't try to move yet. I'm just administering the last bit of Dittany." Draco moaned blearily, conscious for the first time of a cool touch against his bare back. "I said _don't move_."

It came to him slowly and in a jumble of confusing impressions. Madam Pomfrey. The Hospital Wing. The fight! Where were Harper and Vaisey? Where was his wand? He needed to be ready! He needed to defend himself—

Draco sat up very suddenly, and the world toppled around him with dizzying speed. A hand on his arm steadied him, its grip tight with irritation.

"Lie back down right now or you'll tear the skin!" The blurry blob that was Madam Pomfrey attempted to force Draco back down onto the hospital bed. "_Lie down, Mister Malfoy!"_

He meant to take a breath to refuse, but it was as if there was no air in the room. He couldn't coax breath into his lungs. Something deep inside of him constricted; pain shot up his right side, flooding his mind. Choking, clutching his chest and throat, he collapsed on the bed. Darkness crowded in and Madam Pomfrey was shouting him down and there was a flash of silver-bright wandlight, then black.

Several minutes later, Draco meandered back into consciousness. This time, he found he could not so much as wiggle his pinky finger, let alone speak or get up from the bed.

Madam Pomfrey was just returning from somewhere out of sight, a small potion bottle one hand and her wand in the other. "I told you not to move," she said with a grim smile. "This," she continued, placing the bottle on the bedside table, "is for you."

As Draco tried to process what was happening, Madam Pomfrey waved her wand and whatever invisible bonds held him fell away. It was then he realized that he was covered in clean, white bandages.

"Couldn't... breathe..." he said.

"Well, that's because you'd had half your lungs blasted apart. I suspect those boys will be in detention for the rest of their natural lives. And then some." Madam Pomfrey looked positively mutinous. "It serves you all right for fighting in the first week back. Don't you know there's been enough—" She broke off, glancing down at Draco. "I mean to say... Obviously, you don't necessarily _deserve_ a hole blasted through your back... And I'm sure _you_ know all about fighting..."

Draco stared at the bottle of indigo liquid on the bedside table, willing Madam Pomfrey to stop talking. His head ached like he'd had it bashed in by a troll. His back felt hot and pinched and painful.

Madam Pomfrey noticed him looking at the potion bottle. "Ah, yes. As I said, that is for you. I want you to take a sip whenever your breathing becomes labored. Just a sip, mind. It will help heal you from the inside out."

"I—"

"It's a miracle you survived at all," she said, more to herself that to him. "Sit up."

Draco sat, his aching legs hanging over the side of the bed, and Madam Pomfrey busied herself removing his bandages by hand.

"That spell is meant for stone, not human flesh," she continued. "Mister Filch should be squeegeeing you off of the walls right now." When the last of the bandages were folded on the bed beside him, Madam Pomfrey moved quite unexpectedly to look Draco right in the eye. "You're a very lucky young man, Mister Malfoy. I hope you appreciate it."

Draco swallowed. It hurt. "I-I do."

"Good." Madam Pomfrey pressed the bottle of healing potion into his hand and folded his fingers over it, her tired, hazel eyes still locked onto his. "This bottle will refill three times, then you'll have to come back to me for more. If you need more, that is."

"Alright," Draco said. "Thank you."

Madam Pomfrey looked away, clearing her throat. "And I've mended your robes. They're still a bit singed, but I think I've salvaged them. And you should drink some water before you—Oh! _Go!"_ She whipped her head around to look at the large clock on the wall above her office door. It read a few minutes after two in the afternoon. "The Headmistress asked to see you before two o'clock! You'll have to go straight away!"

"But—"

"Here! She practically threw his robes at him. "Go!"

A minute later, Draco was trying not to limp as he made his way to the Headmistress' office, his school uniform mended but rumpled and unwashed, his bookbag slung over his left shoulder instead of his right because the new skin healing over the hole in his back was still tender.

What did the Headmistress want with him anyway? Was she going to expel him after all, after practically bending over backwards to get him back into Hogwarts?

He almost didn't want to know.

"Rontra Narconum," he said to the gargoyle that guarded the entrance to the Headmistress's office. It leaped aside, and he climbed the spiraling staircase up to the door.

Before he could knock, he heard McGonagall's voice say, "Come in, Mister Malfoy." He pushed the door open.

It was quiet except for the whirring of delicate instruments to his right and the even breathing of snoozing portraits. Draco noticed a couple of empty paintings directly behind a huge desk, but didn't have the time or the energy to wonder who was missing. McGonagall sat at the desk, her glasses perched at the end of her nose, her lips pursed as she watched him.

"Sit."

Draco crossed to the desk and sat in the straight-backed chair opposite the Headmistress. She regarded him unblinkingly, scrutinizing, saying nothing. He tried to return her penetrating gaze, but broke off after a moment, hating the nausea of nervousness welling up in his gut, hating the slight wheeze of his breathing, his lungs still half-healed.

"Mister Malfoy, you must know that you are not welcome here."

That was the understatement of the century. But, there it was. She was going to expel him.

"While you cannot fail to know that I have very little sympathy for your predicament given your colourful history, I cannot permit brawling in the hallways, nor will I condone bullying, especially the sort that results in a hole blasted in your back or—" she glanced at a parchment in front of her on the desk "—the word 'fink' written on the back of _any_ students' neck."

She caught his eye again and held it meaningfully before continuing. "Therefore, I have asked you here in order to find a solution to your problem. It would seem that your fellow Slytherins no longer have any use for you in their House. I propose, then, that you need a new House."

Draco blinked. He was still grappling with his anger that Madam Pomfrey had included the ugly brand she'd found festering on his neck in her report to the Headmistress—though of course she would have to have done. At first, the full weight of McGonagall's words did not sink in.

"Headmistress?" he asked, confused.

"You need a new House, Mister Malfoy. And soon. Now, in fact. What do you think?"

"You mean you're _not_ expelling me?"

"Not today, Mister Malfoy," returned McGonagall. She folded her hands over the papers on her desk. "But I think we can both agree that your current state is pitiful. It cannot be allowed to continue. I have discussed your predicament with the Heads of House, and Professor Sprout has graciously agreed to accept you into her House. You should gather your things and report to her immediately."

_Professor Sprout?_ But she was Head of...

"Hufflepuff?!" Draco sputtered. The idea of it! Draco Malfoy in _Hufflepuff? _It was ridiculous, inconceivable!

"Yes, Mister Malfoy. Hufflepuff."

"What? Why?!" he gasped, nearly laughing. Surely this was a joke! Yes, the Slytherins all hated him, and Gryffindor was out of the question, but _Hufflepuff?_ Draco tried to plead his case. "What about Raven—"

"Professor Flitwick has intimated to me that he would prefer a rampaging Nundu to your presence in Ravenclaw Tower. Professor Sprout, however, consented to accept you into her House. You should be grateful, Mister Malfoy."

"Headmistress—"

"That is my final decision, Mister Malfoy," she said. "Either go to Hufflepuff or go home." McGonagall shuffled the papers in her hands and rapped them smartly on her desk.

"But—"

"That is all, Mister Malfoy." McGonagall waved her wand and behind him the office door opened. "Good afternoon."

* * *

As Crookshanks played with a balled up piece of parchment on the floor at her feet, Hermione added the last bullet point to her study schedule and glanced over the long list, trying to think of anything she may have missed. Her N.E.W.T. level courses were exciting, difficult, and, best of all, time-consuming. Without Ron or Harry there to distract her, though, she found that filling the empty hours with studying was oddly unsatisfying.

Not that she missed the near-death exploits or the constant bickering over their avoidance of homework, but she would have liked a little company. There was nobody to talk to anymore. Well, that wasn't exactly true. Everyone in Gryffindor was eager to get a moment with the famous Hermione Granger, the heroine of the Second Wizarding War, the girl who helped defeat Lord Voldemort once and for all.

Hermione didn't feel like any of those things. She barely felt like _her_. Eyes unfocused, she gazed blindly at the parchment in her hand, thinking of bodies like bundles littering the school lawn and rubble falling from the castle battlements and the blistering hot fire that had raged in the Room of Requirement—

"Hermione?" It was Ginny, her broomstick over her shoulder, standing in front of where Hermione sat huddled in a corner of the Gryffindor common room. "We're going to have trials. Do you want to come?"

"So soon? I thought tryouts for Quidditch weren't until next week."

"Well, I'm the Team Captain, and I say there's no time like the present," Ginny replied with a smile. "So, do you want to come along?"

"Thank you, Ginny, but no. I think I'm going to head to the Library to—"

"—Do some studying," Ginny finished for her, looking vaguely amused. "Alright. See you at dinner, then?"

"Sure." Hermione gathered up her books, stuffed them into her bookbag, patted Crookshanks on the head, and followed Ginny and what felt like the rest of Gryffindor House out into the corridor. She trailed behind the crowd all the way down the stairs to the third floor. There, she broke off and headed away from the stairwell and toward the Library corridor.

Two familiar turns later, she could see the Library doors ahead of her when something else caught her eye. Someone was walking slowly down the hallway toward her, his hands in his pockets. There was no mistaking that head of white-blond hair. Malfoy.

Hermione sped up, trying to get to the Library before he noticed her there. The last thing she wanted was a yelling match, and Hermione felt sure Malfoy would find some way to make the whole thing her fault.

"Granger! Hey, Granger!" he called, quickening his pace as best he could.

_Was he limping?_ Hermione remembered the state he'd been in when she had seen him last. Of course he was limping. She would have been surprised if he wasn't.

He reached the doors of the Library almost exactly when she did. "Go away, Malfoy," Hermione said.

"No, wait!" He leaned against one of the doors just as she grabbed for the handle. "Wait."

She turned to face him, folding her arms, building a barrier between them, and waited.

"I wanted to say..." He seemed to be struggling for words. She heard a slight wheeze in his breath. "I wanted to thank you." Hermione raised her eyebrows in surprise. "Thank you. For what you did." She stared at him uncomprehendingly. "Yesterday." As if she needed reminding. "That's all."

Hermione opened her mouth to say something, then closed it. Malfoy didn't seem to need any reply. He shifted his weight from the door and took a few shuffling steps around her before continuing his slow trek down the corridor toward the stairs.

She watched him go, utterly nonplussed. _Thank you? When has Malfoy ever thanked anyone for anything?_

* * *

It was a long, long way from the Headmistress' office to the dungeons to pack his things in solitude, then to Professor Sprout's office near the Herbology greenhouses. He could hear people on the Quidditch pitch as he crossed the lawn to the little stone building that housed extra gardening supplies and the Head of Hufflepuff's quarters.

An hour and a half after his meeting with the Headmistress, Draco came to a stop in front of a weathered door flanked on either side by clay pots and wildflowers. The sun was warm on his skin and the air was fragrant with the smell of garden herbs and tilled soil, but Draco struggled to fill his lungs, his chest rattling as he took great, gasping breaths. With rising panic, he extracted the little potion bottle from his robes, uncorked it, and took a sip. Instantly, he felt better. The potion was tasteless and soothing, something akin to taking a drink of cold water on a summer's day, and though he felt his insides writhe, it was more like the tingle of nervous tension than it was painful.

_That's not so bad_, he thought. _At least she didn't poison me_.

Once he'd calmed down a little, Draco re-corked the bottle, stuffed it into a robes pocket, and set about swallowing enough of his pride to actually knock on the door. This wasn't just visiting a professor, after all; to walk through this door was to entertain leaving behind his House, his birthright, his family honor. No heir in the Malfoy line had ever been sorted into Hufflepuff, let alone made the _choice_ to join their House. He was—had always been—a Slytherin.

But now he was something else.

And, all thought of embarrassment aside, this was a good idea. This was the reason he had come back to Hogwarts, to play the schoolboy and to stay busy until the trials began. A rumor—perhaps even a headline or two—that he'd been removed from Slytherin and placed in Hufflepuff might do wonders for him as regarded public opinion. And good public opinion could open a lot of doors. It could win trials. Regaining the confidence of the average _Daily Prophet_ reader was paramount to his success. If he couldn't do that, then he and his mother had wasted their time and money obtaining him a place at Hogwarts.

And even if joining Hufflepuff turned out to be a mistake, Draco wasn't sure he could endure the entire year in Slytherin. They were right, he didn't belong with them anymore.

Before he could talk himself out of it, Draco knocked and, almost immediately, Professor Sprout answered.

"Come in, come in, dear. I'm just making a cuppa," she said, opening the door wide and waving him in. There was a kettle on the stove and two slightly dusty, handmade mugs on the counter beside it. As Draco entered, the kettle began to whistle shrilly. "Perfect timing, dear. Would you like tea?"

Draco had never had tea in a mug or, as far as he knew, with water from kettle heated the Muggle way, on an actual stove, or with tea bags, which Professor Sprout had left to steep in the water. He nodded, and she smiled.

She offered milk and sugar, which he declined, so she pressed the mug into his hands, gesturing at chair near the window sill where the seedlings of some magical plant swayed lazily in several tiny pots.

"Now," Professor Sprout began, lumping a few spoonfuls of coarse sugar into her mug and stirring as she poured in some milk, "the Headmistress told me this morning that you were having troubles in Slytherin, Mister Malfoy. I gather that's true?" She moved to sit across from him, carefully clutching her steaming tea so as not to spill it.

"Yes," Draco answered. He was uncomfortable with how personable she was, how inviting.

"And I suggested you come to my House, to Hufflepuff."

"You 'suggested' it?" McGonagall had made it sound like Sprout had needed a lot of convincing.

"Well, yes!" said the plump little witch, taking a sip of her tea and wincing. "Be careful, dear, the tea's still hot." She set her mug down on the table between them and looked at him sympathetically. "What was I saying? Ah yes. Naturally, Hufflepuff would be happy to have you. If that's what you want, Draco. May I call you 'Draco'?"

Disarmed, Draco nodded again. _Happy to have me? _

"And you could stay in all of your normal classes. N.E.W.T. courses are all Houses together, aren't they? So that's no trouble. We can charm your uniforms to match Hufflepuff colours—black and yellow, you know. And we have a vacancy in the seventh year dormitory since Hopkins—" She broke off suddenly, her eyes filling with tears.

Draco didn't know what to say, but he knew why Sprout was looking so upset. Wayne Hopkins was one of the students killed during the Battle of Hogwarts. He remembered the name from the list of deaths in the _Daily Prophet. _He'd practically memorized that list. Ever since the article had been published, he'd carried the news clipping around in his robes with him. Another token of his sins added to his growing collection. He thought of the keys around his neck and the brand on his left arm, then tried very, very hard to think of _anything_ else.

Sprout had gathered her mug back into her hands and was cradling it distractedly. Draco remembered that he, too, had tea and took an indecorous gulp of the scalding liquid to distract himself. His whole face contorted with the pain of the piping hot tea scorching his throat.

After an awkward minute of silence, Sprout took out a handkerchief and blew her nose. "Well, anyway, there's a free bed," she said thickly, then she leaned over hand put a hand on his arm. "Draco, no one is going to force you into this. I just want you to know that we Hufflepuffs, well, we're not like your House. You would be safe in my House, I promise you that. No one would... judge you for your past... mistakes."

Draco wondered how any person could be so _good_. She surely knew who he was and what he'd done. Surely she hated him every bit as much as McGonagall or any other person at this school. And what about the other Hufflepuffs? Where they likely to be as accepting of him as she assured him they would be? Draco thought back over the first week of the school year. It was true, no Hufflepuff had joined in the constant harassment he'd had to endure since the start of term. In fact, he couldn't recall a single Hufflepuff who had so much as sneered in his direction.

He wasn't sure he deserved it, but he decided that he would take Sprout up on her offer. Draco supposed that he'd made up his mind back in his Slytherin dormitory as he packed his things. It would be good for his image. And besides, it couldn't get any worse, could it? He smiled inwardly as he remembered his derisive feelings toward Hufflepuff at the Start-of-Term Feast... and every other time he'd ever thought of Hufflepuff. How times change.

"So, Draco, what do you say?" Sprout asked, fixing him with a steady gaze.

"Alright," he said feebly, then with more conviction: "Yes. Thank you, Professor Sprout."

Sprout clapped, her tea splashing onto her hands. "Oh, dear," she said wincing and wiping her hands distractedly on her robes, "Clumsy me—" Then she seemed to remember what had caused her excitement in the first place, and she laughed. "Well, anyway, good! Very good! I think we should head there now, don't you?" she said, standing up. Draco looked up at her then glanced back down at his half-drunk mug of tea. "Oh, just leave it, dear. I'll tidy up later."

Draco set his mug on the little table and got to his feet. Time to meet the Hufflepuffs.

* * *

**A/N**: So, you're either going to love this latest development or hate it, but now I think you'll have a pretty good idea where this story is headed.

And I bet you a shiny gold Galleon that whatever you think you know, you're wrong.

Thank you so much for reading, and don't forget to review!

—Abbs


	5. Chapter 5

******Disclaimer: ****_Harry Potter_**** is property of J.K. Rowling and Warner Bros Entertainment Inc. This story is not written for profit and no copyright infringement is intended.**

******A/N: **A special thank you to **Nicole Zollos** for betaing this chapter. This is her very first time as a beta, and she is just wonderful to collaborate with, so thank you very much to her for all of her hard work.

* * *

******Part I: A Lonely Heart Cannot Atone**

******Chapter 5**

* * *

Hermione wished she could hide in the Library forever. From where she sat in a neglected corner near the Herbology section, she could glimpse the entrance of the Library through a sliver between bookshelves without being visible to the casual observer. She had chosen this spot deliberately; the past week had taught her that her fellow students were willing to brave even irritable Madam Pince to have a heart-to-heart chat with _the_ Hermione Granger.

As she worked on her Potions essay for Professor Slughorn, Hermione's eyes kept darting to the door at every little sound hoping to see who, if anyone, had just entered the Library. But no one had come in—not even a few of the more ambitious Ravenclaws who she often saw huddled together around a study table. She'd been sitting alone for hours, feeling like the sole attendee of an afternoon mass, while Madam Pince skulked around like an underfed vulture dusting and reshelving books.

Hermione wondered if she was the only person who didn't wait until Sunday to do her homework. Not that she was giving her essay her full attention. Mostly, she just slumped over her books and parchment in moody rumination.

Her first week back to school had been a far cry from the blissful escape she'd been imagining. After answering hundreds of variations of the same questions, she'd begun avoiding the company of anyone other than Ginny. And since Ginny was busy with everything from Prefect duties to Quidditch trials to writing Harry expansive letters late into the evening, Hermione was spending a lot of time alone.

All of that alone time provided her with ample opportunity to do homework, but it also gave her plenty of time to brood over the expose from Thursday's edition of _Teen Witch's _"The Dish" discussing her secret love affair with Harry Potter. Didn't they remember the time only a few years ago when Rita Skeeter had tried to trump up some romantic intrigue between her and Harry? Some people had believed it, but the reality was that it just didn't work. There was nothing there.

Couldn't they come up with anything original?

Hermione told herself to be careful what she wished for. She thought of the fuss "The Dish" had made about the time Neville came to visit her while she was staying at the Leaky Cauldron. Yes, they could _definitely_ invent some very creative situations for her and her friends. Neville still blushed whenever they talked.

Somehow she'd been sure that, with school starting, the circling sharks would have to find different prey. With Ginny and Luna and her all locked away behind Hogwarts' high walls, the press would be hard-pressed to get a suggestive picture or follow them around and bombard them with questions.

She had, of course, spectacularly underestimated the vast network of prying eyes in the student populace. Every _Witch Weekly_ and _Teen Witch_ reader was a potential informant, and the gossip columns weren't about to turn down any information they got, no matter how inane. So far they'd published everything from how quickly Hermione did her homework, to how close she and Ginny sat to one another during mealtimes.

Hermione wondered how long it would be until they got wind of the fight that had left Draco Malfoy in the Hospital Wing. Would someone tell "The Dish" that Ginny and Hermione had come to his rescue, that Hermione herself had personally supported a wounded Malfoy all the way to the care of Madam Pomfrey?

At the thought of Malfoy, Hermione's mind seemed to zoom in on the memory of the rusty smell of blood, of the mottled skin of his back, of the keys dangling from his neck. She shuddered in disgust and rubbed her hands reflexively on her robes, wiping away non-existent blood.

Had it only happened yesterday?

_Stop thinking about it._

It was near dinnertime when Madam Pince swept over to her, clutching a few leather-bound books in her bony hands. "The Library is closing for an hour."

Hermione stared at her. The idea of Madam Pince closing the Library before eight o'clock was unthinkable. "What? Why?"

"The new Headmistress—" Madam Pince's grip tightened on _Wilted: A Herbologist's Struggle with Sopophorous Poisoning, _"—has asked for all members of the staff to be present at every meal. Apparently, tirelessly maintaining this school's bastion of knowledge is not a good enough reason to take my meals in my office. Therefore, the Library is closing for an hour over dinner."

"When?"

"Right now, Miss Granger," said Madam Pince. She reached out and unceremoniously shut Hermione's pristine copy of _Advanced Potion-Making._ "Mind you put any library books back where you found them." With that, Madam Pince turned on her heel and disappeared around a bookshelf.

It was just as well. Hermione had run out of homework nearly an hour before, and Ginny would be wondering where she'd gotten to. She packed up her books, carefully folded her essay parchments, and started toward the Great Hall.

On the way, she stopped by the girl's bathroom and ended up staring at her gaunt, harassed-looking face for a long time in one of the cracked mirrors. She didn't like who stared back. Her eyes were muddy brown; her hair was a mess. _She_ was a mess.

What was she doing anyway? What was she playing at coming back to school and pretending like she didn't just spend the last year of her life hunting down Horcruxes with Harry and Ron and getting tortured and escaping impossible situations and watching the people she loved die horribly and leave her forever? How could she pretend everything was just _okay_, when it was anything but?

It was too much pressure when she was already in a vice. She was supposed to be the golden girl of Gryffindor _and_ a _Witch Weekly_ celebrity _and_ a normal girl whose adventure had finally, finally come to an end.

Her eyes ached from reading the tiny print of library books. Her hand ached with the strain of writing essays and drawing diagrams and taking notes. Her head ached with trying to sort out her priorities, trying to focus on school, even while her heart ached with missing Ron and Harry and... everyone else.

The only times she'd seen or heard about them since their farewell at Platform 9¾ were in magazines and the newspaper. Didn't they care about her? Why didn't they write? Why didn't she write them? Why did she feel so desperately lonely, so isolated? Was she doing it to herself?

Hermione turned on the faucet and splashed the cool water over her face. She tried to get a handle on her fly-away curls. She patted her wet skin dry on a hand towel without looking at herself again.

She was going to finish her seventh year and take her N.E.W.T.s and go on to have a brilliant career and that was just the way things were going to be. People would get bored with her eventually, and the glow of celebrity would dim. This feeling of listlessness, of loneliness, would pass.

She looked down at her hands and was surprised to see that she'd been twisting the hand towel so tightly that the fabric seemed in danger of ripping. She shook it out and hung it up again.

Dinner. She should go to dinner.

Hermione left the bathroom and headed down the corridor to the Great Hall and the sound of hundreds of chattering voices. As she walked, she forced her shoulders back and her chin up. Everything was going to be fine.

* * *

Draco followed Sprout down the staircase leading off the Entrance Hall to the hallway below. About halfway down the corridor and near a conspicuous-looking painting of fruit, they came to a halt. They were standing before a shadowed recess full of massive barrels. _This_ was the entrance to Hufflepuff?

Professor Sprout patted him on the shoulder and stepped forward. "Second barrel from the bottom, middle of the second row. Easy enough to remember," she said over her shoulder with a smile. "Just tap the rhythm of 'Hel-ga Huff-le-puff' with your wand like so—" she demonstrated with her own wand, "—and voila!" An opening appeared at the top of the barrel.

"We go down there?" asked Draco, unsure of how to proceed. "How?"

"There's a ladder, dear," replied Sprout. She chambered over the rim of the barrel and disappeared into its depths. Draco heard her call "Come on!" at him as if from a great way down.

It required some finagling with his tender ribs and sore leg, but Draco managed to climb into the barrel with his bookbag in tow. He took each rung of the ladder one at a time, careful to get his footing. Perhaps he was being overly-cautious, but he wasn't completely sure he _wanted_ to see the common room below. The feeling of otherness grew with each step of his descent. He caught glimpses of yellow and back wall hangings, burnished copper lamps, and the colourful blooms of large, leafy plants.

Finally, Draco reached the worn rug at the bottom of the ladder and turned to see the Hufflepuff common room for the first time. It was large, low-ceilinged, warm and comfortable. And full of people.

Her hands on her hips, Sprout stood near some younger students who had been waiting for Draco to move so they could head up to dinner. He hobbled away from the ladder, taking deep, wheezing breaths after the effort of climbing down into the common room, and resisted the urge to take a sip of the potion Madam Pomfrey had given him. Once they recognized Draco, however, those who had been waiting for the ladder froze in place.

A moment passed. No one moved.

"Well, here we are!" said Professor Sprout into the ringing silence, gesturing around the room. The Hufflepuffs were staring at him unabashedly. It must have been a strange sight. Here he was, Draco Malfoy, still in his Slytherin uniform, standing in their cozy, fire-lit common room. He supposed that he'd be giving him those quizzical, suspicious looks too if their roles had been reversed. Still, it didn't help the situation.

Sprout toddled over to a short girl with long blond hair plaited down her back. "Susan, this is Draco Malfoy. He'll be joining us in Hufflepuff," she said to the girl. Taking her arm and practically dragging Susan over to Draco, Sprout continued introductions. "Draco, this is Susan Bones. She's back for her seventh year, too." Susan was ogling open-mouthed at Draco. She didn't speak; she simply stared.

Professor Sprout tried again. "Terwilleger! Come here!" A pale, weedy-looking boy stood up from his squashy armchair near the fire and walked over to Professor Sprout without a glance at Draco. "Draco, this is Jameson Terwilleger. He's good in Herbology but could use a little help in Potions. You're good in Potions, aren't you, Draco?" Neither Draco nor Terwilleger responded to this.

Again, the silence lengthened. Draco had to hand it to Sprout, she was making a real effort. The Hufflepuffs, however, all seemed too petrified with shock to even speak to him, and Draco had no idea what to say to a Hufflepuff. He stuffed his hands into his pockets, feeling the crinkled and folded paper there, and sort of nodded at Terwilleger. The boy nodded back. That was something.

Just then, a tall, sandy-haired boy with an upturned nose rounded the corner into the common room. Draco recognized him as the new Head Boy, Zacharias Smith.

"What the bloody hell—" Smith shouted upon catching sight of Draco standing near the ladder, but he broke off when he noticed Professor Sprout. He stopped mid-step, presumably to take in the full scene, his eyes roving bemusedly over Susan Bones staring at her trainers, Jameson Terwilleger gazing up at the ceiling, and the rest of the Hufflepuffs looking shiftily at him.

"No need for that kind of language, Smith!" chided Sprout from between Bones and Terwilleger.

"Sorry, Professor, I just—"

But Sprout cut him off. "This is Draco Malfoy. He's going to be sharing your dormitory from now on." Her words had a sharp-edged feeling of finality to them, as if she'd had quite enough of this behaviour from her House.

"He—I—_What?!"_ stammered Smith, seemingly in a transport of bewildered indignation.

"I said," Sprout began again, her eyes closing as she tried to mask her irritation with calm, "that Mister Malfoy will be sharing your dormitory here in Hufflepuff House. So you'd better hop off and show him where it is, hadn't you?"

Smith seemed to struggle inwardly for a several painfully-protracted seconds before speaking again. "Yes, Professor."

"Your trunk ought to be in there already, dear," Professor Sprout said to Draco. "Just follow Smith and he'll show you where you'll be sleeping. I'll wait here for you." Then she addressed the room at large: "The rest of you, off to dinner!"

There was a sudden rush for the ladder and Draco had to sidle out of the way to avoid being trampled. He was about to join Smith at the entrance to the hallway when a muscular, dark-skinned boy with a yellow Quidditch Captain's badge pinned to his sweater blocked his path.

"You played Seeker for Slytherin, right?" said the boy, his brown eyes locking intently with Draco's grey.

"Yeah," Draco replied. He hadn't even thought about where he stood with Quidditch, but he couldn't exactly play for the Slytherin House team anymore, could he?

The boy nodded curtly. "Tryouts are next Saturday. We need a good Seeker." Then he stuck out his hand to shake. "I'm Prescott Cadwallader. See you on the pitch?"

Draco smiled in spite of himself and shook hands with Cadwallader. "Definitely."

* * *

So far, dinner for Hermione had been a silent affair. Ginny and her friends discussed their classes and the new professors (Ginny had a lot to say about Percy's performance as Transfiguration teacher), seemingly oblivious to the fact that Hermione did not participate in the conversation. She listened, but could not work up the enthusiasm to join in. Instead, she played with her food and worried about her Potions essay.

She did, that is, until the absolute strangest thing she'd seen in a long while walked into the Great Hall. Hermione felt her fork slide from her hand, heard it plop into the gravy of her mashed potatoes, but she couldn't close her gaping mouth and she couldn't keep her eyes off of Draco Malfoy.

He was striding alongside Zacharias Smith, who was looking sour but not nearly sour enough, in Hermione's opinion. Professor Sprout walked a step behind, smiling to herself with her hands in the pockets of her patched and dusty witch's robes. The two boys had sat down a little distance from each other at the Hufflepuff table and Sprout was well on her way to the staff table before Hermione recovered herself. By that time, however, Ginny had noticed something was amiss by Hermione's befuddled expression.

"What..." Ginny started, but she trailed off as she followed Hermione's gaze to Malfoy, who was now spooning green beans onto his plate. A tall, brawny black boy Hermione recognized vaguely as Cadwallader sat beside him, and as they watched, he offered Malfoy a dish of roast beef.

"How..." Ginny didn't seem capable of finishing a sentence. Hermione couldn't blame her.

The rest of the Great Hall appeared to have noticed this singular scene was well. There was a rush of whispering and a lot of craning of necks as students struggled to get a glimpse of Malfoy at the Hufflepuff table. In fact, the only people not itching with curiosity or stunned into silence by the sight of Draco among the Hufflepuffs appeared to be the Hufflepuffs themselves. While they might have been a bit more subdued than they normally were, if they felt a hint of confusion, they showed no sign of it.

Ginny found her voice again. "What in the name of Merlin's saggy balls is Draco Malfoy doing at the Hufflepuff table?"

Ginny's friends, Vicky Frobisher and Ritchie Coote, practically stood up to get a better look. "Holy Hippogriffs," muttered Vicky in disbelief.

Ritchie added, "That has got to be the weirdest thing I've ever seen in my life. That is weirder than the time Hagrid showed us how Bowtruckles mate. That is weirder than—"

"I agree with you Ritchie, but _please _shut up," said Ginny, cutting across him. She turned to Hermione. "Do you think this has anything to do with the fight Malfoy was in with those Slytherin gits yesterday?"

Hermione thought about it as she stared at Malfoy. He took a bite of roast beef. Cadwallader was talking to him about something animatedly. Malfoy nodded and gave a stiff chuckle.

This was unprecedented. This was crazy. Draco Malfoy couldn't be in Hufflepuff, could he? Well, _could he?!_

"I don't know," Hermione said to Ginny, but Ginny was distracted by something else. She'd turned fully around in her seat and was gazing across the Great Hall at the Slytherin table. Over there, a group of boys, were making quite a lot of noise, pointing and shouting at Malfoy. Hermione recognized the two boys from yesterday's fight, Harper and Vaisey, among them.

"Hey _Malfoy," _one of them catcalled, "don't tell me you're a Hufflepuff now! I didn't think being a slimy little fink could get worse, but you've managed it!"

"Malfoy," shouted another boy, Vaisey, brandishing his wand in the air, "glad those wankers'll have you, 'cause we sure won't miss you!"

If Malfoy could hear them, he ignored them. The rest of the Hufflepuffs, however, glared over at the Slytherin table in disgust, including Cadwallader, who made a crude hand gesture in their direction.

"Hey Malfoy! Malfoy! Is that your _boyfriend_ now?" yelled Harper.

Hermione glanced up at the staff table where McGonagall was focusing on a treacle tart. Apparently the desserts had appeared and none of the students had noticed.

Then a bang echoed through the Hall, quickly followed by another, this time accompanied by a flash of brilliant purple light. Hermione's head snapped back to face the Slytherin boys, one of whom was now writhing on the table with many slimy green tentacles protruding from his exposed skin. They wiggled comically through the air as he thrashed around on the desserts, rolling right over a huge chocolate gateau. His mates staggered back, some falling out of their seats in alarm.

And there, standing alone at the Ravenclaw table with her wand in her hand as a Shield Charm expanded between the Slytherin table and the rest of the Great Hall, was Luna Lovegood. Luna's back was to the Gryffindor table, but that long, wavy blond hair could belong to no one else.

"Leave him alone!" she said, her voice bell-light as ever as it floated above the weighty hush.

Hermione was speechless. She glanced back at Malfoy. No longer pretending to ignore the goings-on behind him, Malfoy had joined the rest of the Great Hall in gawking at Luna.

"That will _do_, Miss Lovegood!" Headmistress McGonagall was on her feet. Everyone turned to look at her. At the Slytherin table, an anguished cry rose from the boy with the tentacles. No one bothered to look at him now, though.

"Fifty points from Ravenclaw and another fifty from Slytherin. Mister Vaisey, you may escort your friend to the Hospital Wing. Madam Pomfrey will meet you there. Now GO!" McGonagall bellowed. Hermione watched Vaisey jump with fright and try to extricate what appeared on closer inspection to be Harper from the puddings. Meanwhile, Luna withdrew her Shield Charm, sat down, and started in on her dessert.

A few strained minutes later, the two boys went reeling from the Hall with all eyes staring at their backs. At the staff table, Madam Pomfrey wiped her mouth, then hurried off to join them.

"There has been _enough _fighting at Hogwarts for several lifetimes," said McGonagall into the general stupor of the Hall. "Really, this is ridiculous. We have all had a trying few years, but that is absolutely _no reason_ to brandish wands at each other like a bunch of drunken hooligans. The next students caught duelling on school grounds will be expelled. Now, Prefects, please escort your Houses back to their dormitories. I don't want to hear another _peep_ out of any of you for the rest of the night."

Ginny stood up at once and looked pointedly around at the Gryffindor Prefects. "You heard her," she hissed. Everyone else got to their feet in silence and started for the Entrance Hall. Hermione watched Malfoy follow the Hufflepuff House Prefects out of the Great Hall, still flummoxed by the scene she'd just witnessed.

* * *

******A/N****: **Thank you so much for reading, and don't forget to review!

—Abbs


	6. Chapter 6

******Disclaimer: Harry Potter is property of J.K. Rowling and Warner Bros Entertainment Inc. This story is not written for profit and no copyright infringement is intended.**

**A/N: **A special thank you to **Nicole Zollos** for betaing this chapter. She's awesome, and I am lucky to be able to work with her on this project.

* * *

**Part I: A Lonely Heart Cannot Atone**

**Chapter 6**

* * *

The Hufflepuff common room was buzzing with conversation about what Luna Lovegood had done to Dennis Harper. No one bothered to suggest that they should go to sleep. Tomorrow was Sunday after all, and it seemed like lots of people suddenly wanted to talk to Draco—or at least about him.

"If you ask me," Prescott said, leaning on the back of a sofa, "—and you didn't, but I forgive you—I think that stunt Luna pulled tonight really helped your chances. A lot of people in Hufflepuff think she's got mettle, if you know what I mean. A lot of people like her." Prescott kicked at the corner of a rug, and though his dark skin made it hard to tell for certain, Draco thought he might have been blushing.

"My chances?" Draco moved to stand next to the sofa with his arms folded and cocked a quizzical eyebrow.

Prescott shot Draco a look of playful exasperation. "Everyone's still making up their minds about you." He gestured to the room at large, and Draco saw many people casting sidelong glances at him from where they sat with friends. "It might take a few days, but they'll come around."

Now that Draco had had some time to hear Prescott speak, he noticed something odd about his accent. He sounded foreign, American maybe, though faintly so. Little turns of phrase and a flatter emphasis on certain sounds gave him away.

Draco couldn't think of a way to ask Prescott about his accent without breaching etiquette. It was a personal question. Even if every Hufflepuff was as oblivious to high-born courtesy as they seemed to be, Draco still didn't feel comfortable prodding a stranger for personal information.

"Come around?" he said instead, picking up the thread of the conversation again.

"Well, you're not exactly in a room full of your biggest fans, mate," Prescott said, chuckling. Draco laughed too, but it sounded hollow to him. Even in Hufflepuff, the pushover House where everyone always got along, he'd have to contend with public opinion. Prescott must have guessed how Draco was feeling because he clapped him painfully on the back and added, "Hey, _I_ like you. That's got to count for something."

Doing his best to cover his wincing by readjusting his robes, Draco was about to ask Prescott _why_ he liked him when he noticed a couple of boys approaching. Draco stood up straight, his nerves buzzing, but Prescott seemed totally at ease.

"Draco, this is Justin Finch-Fletchley," Prescott said, gesturing to a curly-haired, mousy boy. "He's back for his seventh year, too. He spent last year with his grandparents in Ireland on account of his not wanting to get killed by Death Eaters. Justin, meet Draco." Justin looked nervously from Prescott to Draco, unsure of what to do. Draco stuck out his hand and, after a moment's hesitation, Justin took it. They shook.

"And look at that. You both came out the other side just fine!" Prescott said. He had a way of making light of the elephant in the room that made Draco both uncomfortable and more relaxed. His candour certainly put things into perspective.

Draco had already met the other boy, Jameson Terwilleger, who turned out to be a Ballycastle Bats fan. They spent a few tense minutes bemoaning Finbar Quigley's abysmal performance at the 1994 Quidditch World Cup (Quigley played Chaser for both the Bats and the Irish National Quidditch Team) before Prescott called over a boy named Ryan Oaklane.

Ryan sidled up with a girl who looked strikingly similar to him. They both had raven black hair and the same high cheekbones and blue-green eyes. "Draco, this is Ryan Oaklane and his sister Rory," Prescott said.

"They're twins," Jameson added unnecessarily, a crooked grin hitched onto his face.

Both Ryan and Rory rolled their eyes. "He loves to tell people that," Rory said. "Like I need reminding that I'm related to _him_." She pushed Ryan lightly, then waved and made her way across the room to another girl who Prescott said was called Carolyn.

Ryan and Draco shook hands.

"I heard you were in the Hospital Wing," said Ryan, his eyes roaming over Draco's face as if looking for signs of a recent battle, but Madam Pomfrey had healed his broken cheekbone and cut up lip while he lay unconscious the night before. Now if only his lungs would cooperate...

"Yeah," Draco said vaguely. He didn't want to talk about it. Talking about what the Slytherins had done to him made him feel weak, vulnerable, confused. He was already a stranger here, trespassing on another House's turf. Was Ryan trying to make him feel even worse?

But Ryan seemed oblivious to Draco's discomfort. "And is it true about the—" Ryan tapped the back of his neck. Draco took this to mean that word had gotten out about the letters that either Harper or Vaisey had etched into his skin. Instinctively, Draco slid his hand up to cover the nape of his neck. He tried to take a deep, calming breath, but the air hitched in his chest. He coughed a little, making a concerted effort to suppress the urge to hack and gag. Everyone was watching him.

Merlin, this was awkward.

"Let the man breathe, would you?" said Jameson, giving Draco a bracing slap on the back. "You alright there, lil' buddy?"

"I'm fine," Draco gasped, nearly keeling over as the pain of his still-healing shoulder and his useless lungs redoubled. He stole a watery sideways glance at Jameson, sure that the sandy-haired boy was making fun of him. On the contrary, though his voice was light, Jameson seemed genuinely concerned.

"Ryan, look at what you've done! You broke Draco!" That same crooked grin was widening on Jameson's face and Prescott was already laughing, but Ryan looked defensive.

"Did not! He said he's fine!" said Ryan. "You're fine, aren't you, Draco?"

"Dandy," Draco wheezed in reply. Jameson snickered; Ryan didn't.

"You lot really know how to welcome a bloke, Ryan," said Prescott. "He's not here ten minutes and you're already trying to kill him."

"Yeah, with _kindness_," said Jameson with a wink. "It's a Hufflepuff thing," he added to Draco in a stage whisper. Draco, on the other hand, thought about how strange it was to have a Hufflepuff whispering to him about kindness when they both knew that everyone in this room had likely been victimized by Draco at some point in the last seven years.

"Anyway," said Prescott, "me, Justin, Ryan and this prat—" he punched Jameson in the arm, "—are all your bunkmates. Smith's around here somewhere..."

"He's already met Smith," said Justin helpfully.

By this time, Draco was breathing normally again and remembering himself. They all hid it so well, how they really felt, how uncomfortable they really were. They were gracious even as they threw sidelong glances at him, watching him like a wild animal that might suddenly decide to attack.

He thought of how he must seem to them: a stranger, a Slytherin and a Death Eater. The enemy. They were clearly trying to make him feel included, but there was a barrier between these laughing boys and Draco. While they tried to make the best of a strange situation, he knew he still had a long way to go to convince them that he was trustworthy. And to convince himself that this whole thing wasn't the stupidest idea old McGonagall'd ever had. It was a lot of pressure.

To give himself something to do, Draco gazed around the room, trying to take in every face. There were too many people, too many eyes meeting his then darting away. He guessed that he'd never actually spoken to the majority of the people crowded into the common room, and he barely recognized any of them from his previous years at Hogwarts. He'd just have to learn fast. The thought was overwhelming.

Again, Prescott seemed to read Draco's mind and steered the conversation back to Quidditch. "Draco says he's going to grace us with his presence at Quidditch trials," he informed the others. They all looked at Draco incredulously.

"Really?" Ryan said. "I thought you wouldn't want..." He broke off, but Draco knew what he was going to say. Ryan didn't think Draco would want to be on a team with Hufflepuffs. He couldn't honestly say he was surprised. He wasn't sure he wanted to be on a team with Hufflepuffs either.

"Prescott says you need a Seeker," Draco offered.

Jameson jumped on that immediately. "Yeah, we do! Our last Seeker was Ashton Summerby. He graduated last year, which is fortunate because he was terrible."

Everyone agreed.

"Gryffindor are favourites to win the Cup this year with Weasley as Captain," Prescott said. "I aim to prove everyone wrong about that."

This was something to which Draco could relate. He'd lost every game he'd ever played against Gryffindor and had more than a little trouble keeping the malice out of his voice when he spoke. "I really hate that team."

"Yeah, it's a little different when it's Slytherin and Gryffindor," Ryan said. "One of the two always wins the Cup. This year is going to be different."

Draco nodded along with the rest. It certainly was.

Around three in the morning, the mood in the common room was distinctly more subdued, but nearly half of the House was still sitting around the fire or at the tables playing games or doing homework. Justin suggested they head to bed, and after Prescott issued an open invitation to the room at large to play a friendly game of Quidditch after breakfast, almost everyone decided it was time to get some sleep.

"Everyone'll want to come and watch, at least," he told Draco as they headed toward the round portal to the dormitory hallway with Justin, Ryan, and Jameson. That was smart, getting everyone to go to bed by inviting them to an event the next morning. Draco decided that he like Prescott Cadwallader. And he liked Jameson Terwilleger, too, who had told Draco just to call him "James."

Strange. He knew almost nothing about them. What of their blood status? Their family? It didn't seem important.

"What about Malfoy?" said a voice behind them.

Draco and his four roommates turned to face whoever had spoken. It was Zacharias Smith.

"What _about_ him?" Prescott replied. Everyone who'd been on their way to bed had stopped by now. They all stood listening, their eyes moving between Prescott, Smith, and Draco.

"Are you inviting the Slytherin Death Eater to play Quidditch tomorrow?"

"It was an open invitation," Prescott said. "Everyone's invited. That's what 'open invitation' means, Smith."

Smith sneered. "I don't think that's safe. He might hurt someone." A few people around Smith seemed to agree with him.

Draco stared into Smith's disdainful face. _Hurt someone?_

"That's sort of crazy, Smith," James said.

"Is it?"

James threw up his hands in exasperation and turned to Prescott with an expression that clearly said, "You handle this."

"Yeah, it _is_ crazy," said Prescott, picking up where James had left off. "Draco's not going to hurt anyone, are you, Draco?"

"I hadn't planned on it," Draco said, still shocked that someone would just assume he was going to attack people on the Quidditch pitch. Then he remembered all the times he'd attacked people on the Quidditch pitch and wondered if Smith had a point. "No, definitely not."

"See? Now let's go to bed." Prescott had half-turned around when Smith spoke again.

"I'm not going to sleep in the same room as that monster." People had started whispering to each other. Draco wondered how many of them were secretly worried that he would try to kill them in their sleep.

James just laughed. "Well, then you should come get a blankie, Smith, because it's going to get cold out here in the common room."

"It's not a joke, James—"

"Only my friends call me 'James,' Smith. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm suddenly very tired." James put an arm around Draco and steered him off down the dormitory hallway and into the seventh year boys' room.

As soon as they'd shut the door, James dropped his arm from Draco's shoulder, strode over to his bed, and kicked his trunk as hard as he could. Wincing, he hopped around on one foot while Justin and Prescott tried to keep a straight face. Finally, he sat down on his bed and said heavily, "Blimey, I hate that little git."

"He's not subtle," Justin said, opening his trunk and pulling out a pair of purple pin-striped pyjamas.

"That's a massive understatement," Prescott said as he peeled off his shirt and began looking around for another one.

Draco said nothing. Sure, he was angry with Smith for calling him out in front of half of Hufflepuff House, but he also thought Smith was well within his rights to have concerns. It wasn't long ago, not even a year, that Draco wouldn't have thought twice about hexing Smith if he'd crossed him. But things were different now.

Still, Draco's pride turned painful knots in his stomach, and he felt slightly nauseous at his own cowardice. He was a Malfoy, after all. He should have some self-respect. He shouldn't have let other people defend him. He shouldn't have let someone like Smith get away with speaking to him as if they were _equals_.

_No_, Draco thought, correcting himself, _as if they were _enemies_._

"So," said Prescott, interrupting Draco's thoughts. When he looked up, Draco saw everyone was watching him very seriously. "No offense, mate, but is he right?"

Draco took "he" to mean "Smith" and gritted his teeth. "About which part?"

"Are you still a Death Eater?" Justin blurted out at once. It was as though he'd been waiting for his opportunity since Draco had arrived.

Now Draco had a choice to make.

The strange emphasis Hufflepuff placed on honesty and forthrightness felt alien, invasive, but if this was to be his interrogation, Draco figured he might as well get it over with. He was not among his own kind anymore, and the old customs would have to make way for the new. He couldn't allow himself to feel offended that these boys expected honest answers from him. Truth was important to Hufflepuffs, so it was truth they'd get. Draco couldn't afford any more enemies.

"No," Draco said, taking his time to reply. "I'm not still a Death Eater."

Justin had another question ready. "Do you want to be?"

This time, Draco didn't even have to think about it. "No."

And another. "How do we know you're not lying?"

"I guess you'll just have to trust me," Draco said, and he was careful to keep any amusement out of his voice. "I'm not a Death Eater."

"Do you still have the Dark Mark?"

Draco heaved a sigh, his gaze moving to the ceiling. Could this be any more humiliating? "Yes, I do."

"Can we see it?"

"Justin," said Prescott with a warning in his voice. "We don't need to see it."

"I'd like to," Ryan said quietly.

"No one needs to see the Mark," said Prescott, now with more authority. "We all know Draco has one. I think that's enough, alright?"

Justin nodded and turned away. Ryan gave Prescott a hard look, then shrugged and fiddled with the handle of something that looked like a broom cleaning kit. Apparently Hufflepuffs _did _place limits of propriety on their pursuit of the truth. Draco was grateful, at least, for that.

"Well, are you going to get it removed?" asked Ryan.

"I can't. Not without cutting off my arm." Draco rubbed his left arm and thought he could feel the raised scar tissue through his shirt. "It doesn't matter what I do to it. It just comes back."

None of them had to ask to know by his tone that he'd already tried everything he could think of to get rid of the brand. He wondered if the thought comforted them.

"Why are you in Hufflepuff now?" asked James, speaking for the first time in minutes.

Draco struggled with this one. It cost him something to admit such weakness. "There are a lot of people in Slytherin who hate me."

James laughed. "I hate to break it to you, lil' buddy, but that's the whole school."

"Not the _whole_ school," amended Prescott. James gave him a deferential nod.

"But Slytherin hate tends to come with a body count," said Ryan unexpectedly. "I get why you'd want out."

Draco wasn't sure why Ryan's perspective on Slytherin irked him so much, but it did. It was strange to hear outsiders talk about Slytherin as if they understood its inner workings. Yes, there was truth to what he'd said. Slytherins were firm believers in corporal punishment, in getting what they wanted by whatever means necessary. Sometimes that included violence. Violence, after all, was a useful tool if one knew how to wield it properly.

That didn't make every Slytherin a killer. They weren't all the psychotic, blood-obsessed monsters Ryan was making them out to be. There was a way things were done, and Draco wasn't toeing the line anymore. He may not know exactly what he'd done to incur the censure of his former House, but he knew that he'd shamed them and brought the disapproval of the rest of the school down on them. Now he was paying the price.

"In Slytherin, there are rules," Draco said, trying to explain, "and I'm being punished for breaking them. It happens all the time."

"It's not going to happen anymore," said James. "We've got your back."

"Listen," Draco said, "thank you for the offer, and thanks for what you did, defending me to Smith and all, but I don't need your help."

Prescott regarded Draco gravely. "Trust me, mate, you need all the help you can get."

"What I need," Draco retorted, his frustration getting the better of him, "is to be left alone."

"That might be a problem, too," said James, "because we're not going anywhere."

That seemed to decide something for everyone, as if James had finally come to the conclusion they had all been trying to reach. Whatever Draco said, he needed support. He needed friends. And Prescott, James, Rory, and Justin were going to be those friends. Because they weren't going anywhere, and that's just how it was going to be.

Draco couldn't think of anything to say to that, so he turned to survey his trunk and bed, momentarily distracted when he noticed that all of his uniforms had been stacked neatly on top of his trunk. He wondered vaguely how that had come about, but was too tired to give it much thought.

Slumping onto his bed and staring down at his new Hufflepuff-issued patchwork quilt, Draco tried to stop himself from feeling guilty. He shouldn't attack these boys. They wanted to help him. They'd made an effort to make him feel welcome. They'd shown an interest in him, asked questions to learn more about him. He wanted to say something to them—apologize, _anything_—but he couldn't think how to even begin. What could he say? Why would they even care?

There was a lot of creaking of bedsprings a minute later as everyone finished changing in silence and got into bed. The lights darkened, but Draco lay there fully-clothed feeling sorry for himself. He had known that transferring to Hufflepuff wouldn't solve all of his troubles, but he hadn't even thought about the fresh crop of problems that his mere presence would create.

After what felt like a long time, he fished around in his pocket for the news clipping and drew it out. He held it close to his face, straining his eyes to make out the text in the dim firelight glowing through his curtains. One by one, he read their names. From Death Eaters to Hogwarts students, he breathed their names in the dark. The dead. The blood on _his _hands.

When he reached the bottom of the wrinkled, faded paper, Draco folded it carefully and gripped it tight in his fist. He turned onto his side and stared wearily at one of the wooden posts of his bed, but in an instant his eyes widened and his blood froze in his veins. There, barely visible in the faint yellowish light, he saw a name he'd whispered a hundred times carved into the wood: _Wayne Hopkins_.

* * *

Hermione was alone again. This time, she was the only one awake in her dormitory. Everyone else had gone to sleep hours ago. Even Crookshanks was curled up, slightly snoring, at the end of her bed. But Hermione couldn't seem to shake the events of that evening. Firstly that Malfoy, a name synonymous with "Slytherin" to her, had sat with the Hufflepuffs. Secondly, that members of his own House had attacked him right in the middle of the Great Hall, and thirdly, that Luna Lovegood had shielded him from harm and retaliated seemingly without any inducement on Malfoy's part. How could _any_ of that _be?_

She lay on her bed, her curtains open so she could see out of the window into the moonlit grounds beyond, and let the scene play over and over in her head. She went through each part and dissected it. Malfoy was in Hufflepuff. Probably to reduce the amount of in-House bullying he'd encountered from Slytherin during his first week back. That had the ring of logic. What better House than Hufflepuff the Just, the Loyal, the Accepting, to take Malfoy in and protect him from further torture at the hands of his Slytherin bullies? But how could _any_ Hufflepuff look at Malfoy and see a friend? Hermione couldn't tell.

Those Slytherins must have truly loathed Malfoy to have antagonized him so ferociously. But _why?_ What had he done to incur their wrath? Maybe it was because he'd gone against their Slytherin code. Which was...? _Be a slimy git at all costs_, thought Hermione perniciously.

The Sorting Hat always used words like "cunning" and "ambition" to describe Slytherin. What else? Hermione ticked off traits in her head. _Traditionalism. Self-preservation. Shrewdness. Guile. _Had he violated any of these expectations? _Well, if he hadn't before, he has now. _Still, something didn't quite fit. Something about the whole situation was... odd.

Luna. What could she have been thinking? Luna hadn't so much as mentioned Malfoy for months. Granted, Luna had been bullied in the past, so it sort of made sense that she would defend Malfoy. Still, Hermione wasn't sure she'd come to the aid of someone who'd held her captive in his cellar for months on end. Had they spoken? Had he apologized? Hermione wished she knew the whole story.

A rush of movement at the window caught Hermione's eye. Ron's tiny owl, Pigwidgeon, was pinging through the air just outside of the glass. She got up and opened the window, and a moment later Pig zoomed happily around the darkened dormitory, waking Crookshanks whose eyes flashed as he stood up to give chase, his tail swishing with anticipation.

"No, Crookshanks!" Hermione hissed. Crookshanks regarded her imperiously, then sat down and began to clean his paws with pointed indignation.

After some difficulty, Hermione caught Pig and managed to make him sit still in her lap long enough to extract the paper tied around his leg.

It was from Ron. Finally, a letter. Hermione felt a flood of guilt at not having written to him yet, then another surge of happiness. She grabbed her wand, murmured "_Lumos," _and began to read.

_Dear Hermione,_

_I hope you're doing okay. We've been hearing all about your secret romance with Harry for the past week. I'm sure the two of you will be very happy together. Ha!_

_Harry and I are training hard at the Auror's Office. It's not much fun, to tell you the truth. This place needs an overhaul. Harry mentioned he got ambushed by some reporter (not Skeeter) outside of the Ministry today. Surprise, surprise. They really need to step up security. Oh, hang on, that's our job._

_Listen, I was wondering when your first trip to Hogsmeade would be. We want to come see you and Ginny. I know Harry's downright disgusting in his letters to her. Have you seen them? Don't._

_How's Hogwarts? How's Luna and all the old D.A.? How was your first week back?_

_Missing you,_

_Ron_

Hermione felt like she had never been so happy to receive a letter. Seeing Ron's handwriting was comforting beyond words. She reread the letter a few times, laughing silently at his jokes, fighting back tears of relief for who knew what reason. Of course he and Harry wouldn't have taken Patience Bright seriously. Of course they were doing just fine on their own. Of course he missed her.

Finally, she stuffed a now positively quivering Pig into her pillowcase where he hooted happily, and rummaged around in her bookbag for quill, parchment, and ink. Once she'd gotten everything, she padded over to the window and extinguished her wand to write by moonlight.

_Dear Ron,_

_Ambushed by a reporter? What did they want from him? The usual hero stuff or were they anxious for a quote about our illicit love affair? Either way, I'm sure Harry charmed them._

_I hope you're learning loads at the Auror's Office. I almost wish I could be there with you, but my studies have kept me very busy._

She stopped there, her quill poised over the full stop she'd just made, and wondered what to say about Malfoy. When the words came to her, she began again.

_Malfoy's in Hufflepuff now. It seems like he's had a pretty rough time of it so far at school. Ginny and I found him fighting with some other Slytherins outside of Charms on Friday. I had to take him to Madam Pomfrey afterwards. Then at dinner tonight, one of the Slytherins tried to hex him in the Great Hall and Luna blocked it and hexed the boy right back. I wonder why she would do something like that. Do you know?_

_Anyway, our first trip to Hogsmeade probably isn't until October, which is a shame because I would have liked to have gone for my birthday. I'll keep you posted._

_Hogwarts is good. That memorial statue Harry said he hated really is awful. Everyone's doing well here. Ginny had Quidditch trials today. From what I gather, Peakes and Coote are back on as Beaters and Vicky Forbisher is the new Keeper. Then there's Neil Randall, Michael Karume, and Ginny, of course, as Chasers. And a fifth year named Vemla Holmes is Seeker. Thought you'd like to know._

_My first week back was quiet, aside from all the gossip and everyone wanting to talk to me about what we got up to all last year. They make it sound like a holiday, you know? Though I suppose that running around the countryside looking for Horcruxes seems like fun compared to a Hogwarts crawling with Death Eaters. Still, it's a bit off-putting._

_I miss you, Ron. You and Harry._

_Love from,_

_Hermione_

Hermione folded up the letter, retrieved Pig from the pillowcase, and tied it on with the same string Ron had used. Pig didn't need any encouragement; as soon as Hermione let him go, he whizzed off into the starry night sky. She watched him until he disappeared, then she shut the window and climbed back into bed, clutching Ron's letter to her chest.

Eventually, Crookshanks snuggled up to her and fell into a doze, and though his rhythmic breathing and body heat were a comfort to her, it felt like a long time before Hermione drifted uneasily into sleep.

* * *

**A/N: **Thank you so much for reading, and please don't forget to review!

—Abbs


	7. Chapter 7

**Disclaimer: Harry Potter is property of J.K. Rowling and Warner Bros Entertainment Inc. This story is not written for profit and no copyright infringement is intended.**

**A/N: **A special thank you to **Nicole Zollos** for betaing this chapter. She's awesome, and I am lucky to be able to work with her on this project.

* * *

**Part I: A Lonely Heart Cannot Atone**

**Chapter 7**

* * *

Hermione woke up with the rest of her dormitory on Sunday morning for breakfast. She wasn't exactly well-rested, but she couldn't help smiling as she slipped Ron's letter into her pocket.

"What are you so happy about?" Ginny asked, rolling up the sleeves of her sweater.

Hermione tried to stop grinning, but failed miserably. "Nothing."

"Uh-huh," said Ginny. "I'm starting to feel like we need to hose you down."

"Why don't you mind your own business, Ginny?" said Vicky, sitting on Ginny's bed to put on her socks and shoes.

"That's rich coming from you, miss _Teen Witch!"_

Vicky just shrugged. "I think Hermione has a nice smile. She's hardly ever smiling in the pictures."

"Or ever," added Ginny.

Flushing, Hermione stood up. "Okay, okay. Can we just go now? I'm starving."

The three girls headed from the seventh and eighth year girls' dormitory through the empty common room to the portrait hole without meeting a single person. It was still a bit early for breakfast, but most people, still in a state of rumor-fueled agitation over the events at dinner the night before, had already gone down to breakfast in the hopes of a dramatic sequel.

Hermione, too, felt a little rush of curiosity at the thought of Luna playing rescuer to Draco the Hufflepuff. Briefly, the questions she'd pondered the night before about Draco's situation and Luna's role in it drowned out her excitement that she might receive Ron's reply at breakfast. Lost in thought, she walked alongside Ginny and Vicky, barely taking in their conversation.

"Good thing we had our trials yesterday," Ginny was saying, pointing out the windowpanes misted with rain.

"Yeah," Vicky agreed, shaking back her long, curly blond hair. "I'm not one for getting soaked if I can help it."

Ginny laughed. "Well, rain has its advantages. If I'd known you were going to be such a girl about it—"

"You what?" Vicky raised her eyebrows.

"I'm just saying, I'm not above taking some sheers to that hair if it makes you a better Keeper."

Now Vicky was laughing, too. She tugged playfully on Ginny's ponytail, and Ginny batted her away.

"It's going to be a good year, though," Ginny said. "I think we've got that Cup in the bag."

Great. They were talking about Quidditch again. Hermione allowed herself to trail along behind them. They didn't notice.

"Hey, Hermione! Wait up!" It was Natalie Fairbourne, one of the girls in Ginny's year with whom Hermione now shared a dormitory. Natalie had also fought alongside Vicky, Ritchie, and Colin in the Battle of Hogwarts, an act of heroism that had lost her three fingers on her right hand. She wore a magical glove that acted very much as a Muggle prosthesis might, both masking her injury and offering her an approximation of the use of her missing fingers.

Hermione had learned not to look at the glove, just as she'd taught herself not to notice so many other scars on the students around her. She didn't want to identify her peers by the wounds of their past. She didn't want to be constantly reminded of the dark times. And so she focused on other things, other identifying characteristics.

Natalie wasn't a gloved hand, then; she was full lips and wavy brown hair and black-brown eyes and covered in freckles just like Ron's, which made Hermione think of him again and induced a wide smile. As she slowed and Natalie ran down a few steps of the staircase to catch up to her, Hermione tried to make herself stop beaming like an idiot. Her cheeks were starting to hurt.

"Thanks for waiting for me," Natalie said, then when she came up level to Hermione: "Whoa! You look happy this morning!"

Hermione's smile faded. "Why is everyone so surprised?"

"I—"

"Never mind. It's okay." Hermione shook her head as if to clear it and started walking again with Natalie at her side. "What's up?"

Looking sheepish, Natalie said, "I was just wondering... if you kept in touch with Viktor Krum?"

"_Viktor?"_ Hermione nearly missed the next step and had to pause to catch her balance again. She had expected more questions about Horcruxes and Lord Voldemort or at least about "The Dish"'s version of her love life, which was shaping up to be infinitely more interesting than the real thing. She wasn't sure she was prepared to answer questions about Viktor.

"Right. Well, I'm a big fan of his," Natalie explained.

"Oh. Right."

"Anyway, do you?"

Hermione suppressed the urge to ask why exactly Natalie wanted to know. Instead, she said, "Not really. I saw him at the wedding last year, but that was the last time."

Natalie looked worried. "The wedding?"

"No, not—It was my boyfriend's brother's wedding," Hermione said.

Natalie visible relaxed, then glanced at Hermione curiously. "Your boyfriend? Is that Ron Weasley?"

Had she really just called Ron her boyfriend? Hermione supposed he was, but she'd never actually said it aloud before. She wondered whether Natalie would be one of those girls who ran off to tell _Teen Witch_ that Hermione Granger had at long last confirmed that Ron Weasley was her boyfriend.

"Yes," Hermione answered slowly. Maybe it was a stupid thing to admit to a near-stranger, but the thought of Ron being her boyfriend had her grinning like a little girl in spite of herself.

"Did somebody say 'Weasley'?" Ginny asked. She and Vicky both turned around, then Ginny did an over-dramatic double-take. "Merlin, Natalie, what did you do to Hermione?!"

Startled, Natalie stared at Hermione as if she were about to start crying blood. "What? I didn't—"

"She's smiling again!" Ginny said by way of explanation, then laughed while Natalie's expression changed from concern to confusion.

"We were just talking about Ron," Hermione said, still beaming.

"Oh." Ginny made a face. "Gross."

They had reached the marble staircase that led to the Entrance Hall before Natalie spoke again. "So, Viktor—"

"I don't really know Viktor anymore, Natalie. We've lost touch," Hermione said. "And, I'm sorry, but to be honest, I don't feel comfortable giving you any personal information about him. He's a very private guy."

Natalie's face went from shocked to irritated to resigned within the span of a few seconds. "Yeah, okay, Hermione. I knew it was a long shot."

"I'll see you, okay?" Hermione sped up to join pace with Ginny and Vicky, leaving a disappointed Natalie behind.

Ginny was just saying, "Well, I for one have got a ton of homework to catch up on for Potions. Hermione, do you think you could...?" They'd arrived at the entrance of the Great Hall, and Hermione noticed right away what had made Ginny stop in her tracks.

There was Malfoy again, in the middle of the Hufflepuff table. No longer was he sitting in hunched silence. Far from it! He was standing up at his seat and tossing a Quaffle over the heads of several breakfasting Hufflepuffs to a younger boy. The boy caught it then passed it back down the table to Cadwallader. Cadwallader stood on his seat and pointed at a blond girl in a purple sweater with one hand, brandishing the Quaffle in the other.

"Better not miss this, Carolyn!" he called before chucking the ball at her. Quick as lightning, she stuffed a piece of bacon into her mouth and caught the Quaffle. The Hufflepuff table cheered—with the exception of Zacharias Smith. Looking as tired as Hermione, the new Head Boy sat moodily at the end of the table and pushed a fried egg around his plate without lending the remotest impression that he intended to eat it.

"What is going on with them?" Vicky whispered to Ginny and Hermione. They started walking again and joined their fellow Gryffindors at their table a moment later.

"No idea," Ginny said. "Mental, that lot."

Hermione spent the first part of her breakfast watching Malfoy with the Hufflepuffs out of the corner of her eye. When the mail came in a shower of water droplets from the wings of a hundred owls, Hermione looked around hopefully for Ron's reply. She wasn't disappointed. Amid the usual several dozen letters from fans, Hermione found a slightly soggy Pig in a bowl of fruit near Ginny. Hermione extracted the damp letter from his leg while the little owl helped himself to some cantaloupe.

"What's that?" asked Ginny, gesturing to the parchment Hermione was unfolding.

"Letter from Ron," Hermione replied.

"Gross." Ginny went back to her cereal.

Hermione made a face at Ginny, then had to pull the letter up sharply as another owl carrying the _Daily Prophet_ landed in her breakfast and slopped porridge down her front. Wiping up as best she could, Hermione paid the second owl (which flapped its enormous wings and sprayed everyone with rainwater) and hushed Pig, who was hooting merrily and now covered in porridge. She set the rolled-up newspaper on top of her fanmail and resumed opening Ron's letter.

_MALFOY'S IN HUFFLEPUFF?!_

_That's the sort of news you lead with Hermione! Blimey!_

_And Luna stood up for Malfoy? Now I've heard everything. Wait until Harry finds out. I'd tell him now, only he's been at the office since Saturday night. Going to drive himself mental, he is._

_Speaking of slimy gits, I wanted to give you a heads up that you might be summoned to the Malfoy trials to give a witness testimony. I don't know much yet; the clerks over at the Wizengamot are about as good-natured as a pack of trolls._

Hermione didn't want to think about having to go to court, especially to talk about things that had happened during the war, but she felt a tiny twinge of satisfaction that maybe the Malfoys would finally get their comeuppance. She went back the the letter.

_I don't want to wait until October. Maybe we can work it out with old McGonagall so that Harry and I can come visit you at school for your birthday or something. I'll get Harry to send her an owl. She always liked him better._

_Sounds like Quidditch is going to get along fine without us this year. Tell Ginny that she's got a Weasley tradition of excellence to uphold, so she better get that Cup._

_I miss you, too, Hermione. Things aren't the same without you around. I wish I had your help. You were always so much better at all of this stuff than I was._

_Love,_

_Ron_

Hermione took a deep breath, tucked the letter into her pocket for later, and told Pig to head over to the Owlery for the time being. She'd come find him when she had a reply. Pig shot off through one of the high windows, and Hermione noticed the watery grey of the clouds on the ceiling of the Great Hall.

"So?" said Ginny solicitously. "What did he say?"

"He said I might be asked to testify at the Malfoy trials."

"Oh, lovely. Well, you can tell them all that Malfoy's a Hufflepuff and everything's okay now." Ginny laughed, and Hermione smiled in a preoccupied way that made Ginny ask, "What else?"

"He said that Harry's going to write to McGonagall and ask to see us. For my birthday."

"What do you think the odds of McGonagall allowing that to happen are?"

"I wouldn't bet on it," answered Hermione, stealing a glance up at the staff table. McGonagall and Sprout had their heads together. Sprout was smiling as she murmured something to the Headmistress, but McGonagall looked solemn. Hermione guessed they were talking about Malfoy by the way they kept looking down at the Hufflepuff table.

"Oh, wow!" said Vicky, and Hermione turned just in time to see her nudge Natalie. They were sharing a _Teen Witch_ magazine labeled "ADVANCE COPY" between them. The front cover's headline read "Exclusive! Heiress Daphne Greengrass Gives First Interview Since Being Injured in the Battle of Hogwarts" with the subheading "Patience Bright interviews Ms. Greengrass and her sister at their family's luxurious Swiss chalet!". Two extremely pretty girls posed in the picture, the Alps looming huge and snowy white in the background.

Hermione supposed she should be glad that _Teen Witch_ had devoted a cover story to something other than gossip about herself and her friends. Still, there was something about it that rubbed her the wrong way. Daphne Greengrass had been in Pansy Parkinson's gang of Slytherin girls back at school. Why should _Teen Witch_ think that she and her sister were deserving of a cover story?

"Hermione, look." Ginny gestured covertly with her spoon toward the staff table, and Hermione saw McGonagall making her way down the aisle between Gryffindor and Ravenclaw. Ginny and Hermione hurried to look busy eating, but a moment later McGonagall bared down on them, her lips thin and her spectacles flashing.

"Miss Granger, Miss Weasley, I've had an owl from Mister Potter about you two."

"Oh really, Headmistress?" Ginny said a little too innocently.

"Not a chance," said McGonagall with a meaningful look at both of them. It was obvious to Hermione that McGonagall knew that _they_ knew what the letter was about. "Mister Weasley and Mister Potter can wait until October. I daresay they've got enough to keep them busy at the Ministry until then." But the corners of her mouth twitched as if she almost thought of smiling.

Hermione nodded her defeat, and Ginny rolled her eyes as McGonagall swept from the Great Hall past the Hufflepuffs who had gotten to their feet en masse and were toting their broomsticks out into the Entrance Hall in the direction of the great front doors.

"Told you!" said Hermione.

Ginny shrugged. "It was worth a shot. So, what about that Potions homework?"

* * *

Draco's feet squashed into the soggy grass as he made his way to the Quidditch pitch with the other Hufflepuffs. About half of them had broomsticks over their shoulders, and Prescott was dragging a bag of Quaffles. Usually, Draco hated playing Quidditch in the rain, but with the Hufflepuffs, it was less a problem and more of a perk. Instead of worrying about how conditions would affect gameplay or how he must look like a half-drowned albino rat, Draco focused on other things: the light sprinkle of cold water on his cheeks felt good; the smell of wet grass hung thick in the air; the heavy footfalls of a hundred people about to play Quidditch purely for the fun of it.

Most everyone in his new House had turned up for the game, and those who weren't interested in playing found good spots from which to watch in the Hufflepuff stands. Everyone else came to a stop in the middle of the pitch and looked to Prescott for further instructions.

Prescott dropped the sack of Quaffles at his side as the crowd formed a semicircle around him. "Alright you lot, listen up! We're going to play six on six. No Seekers, no live Bludgers. I brought some extra Quaffles—" he leaned down and dug around in the bag, producing two mud-splattered balls, "—so the Beaters can throw them instead." He took out his wand and tapped each Quaffle in turn. Both turned a bright, cerulean blue and deflated a little.

"So," he continued, "two Beaters on each team, three Chasers, and a Keeper. Who wants to be a Beater?"

"At once, the fifth year boy Draco had thrown the Quaffle to during breakfast stepped forward, followed closely by another boy who looked to be in the same year. They grinned at each other and bumped elbows. "Alright, Owen and Kevin, you're on Yellow Team. Who else?"

Three more people moved to the center, and Prescott chose two to be Beaters for the Black Team.

"Great!" he said. "Keepers?" Prescott chose Carolyn Stump for the Black Team and a very young boy, a second year by the look of him, for the Yellow Team.

"Chasers?" Almost everyone left stepped forward. Prescott chuckled. "Well, yeah, obviously. Ryan and Rory, why don't you and Isaac take the Yellow Team?" The three of them nodded and walked over to where the rest of the Yellow Team waited. "James, take these two and join Black."

It took Draco a moment to realize that Prescott was looking at him expectantly. "What, me?" he said, pointing at himself.

"Yes, you! Go with James and Laura. You're a Chaser for Black." Everyone laughed and Draco felt himself blush. "The rest of you," Prescott continued, "head over to the stands. We'll switch out in a bit."

"What about you, cap'n?" James asked.

Prescott grinned. "I'm the referee."

"So much for a fair game!" said James. Prescott just rolled his eyes.

"Hey, Prescott," Draco said, and James and Prescott turned to him, both looking as though they knew exactly what he was about to say. "I actually think I should sit this one out. I wouldn't want to—"

"Don't be an idiot," Prescott replied, but James stuck his hands in the air and whooped as if in celebration.

"You owe me a Sickle, mate!" he said to Prescott, a broad smile on his face. "I bet you before we even went down to breakfast that he'd try to get out of it, now pay up!"

Prescott waved James down. "Look, Draco, you can't let Smith get to you."

"Yeah, lil' buddy!" said James, ruffling Draco's damp hair. "Besides, we want to see what you've got! Now quit stalling and come on." James slung an arm over Draco's shoulder and they started toward the Black Team.

As they walked, another thought occurred to Draco. "I've never played Chaser," he said.

"Seems like now's a good time to learn, huh?" James returned with a smile. "It's not that hard, I promise. If they'll let me do it, it's got to be easy."

The Black Team seemed to be taking their cues from James. He showed them all how to turn their sweaters or t-shirts black so that everyone would know who was on what team. A little ways away, Draco noticed the Yellow Team following suit.

And it was James who suggested that they all introduce themselves so that they'd know whose name to yell if someone dropped the Quaffle. Draco chuckled nervously with the rest of his team, but he knew that James had made his suggestion for Draco's benefit, so that he would know their names. He knew that practically everyone in Hufflepuff was best friends already. The only person having trouble with names was him.

Yves Slipton and Rundi Muamsted were Beaters for the Black Team. Yves was pale and restless; she kept tapping her shoes with her Cleansweep Seven. Rundi, by contrast, looked as though she were carved from wood. Her deeply tanned skin glistened with rain, and her damp, jet black hair fell straight down her back.

Then there was Laura Lufkin, a third year playing Chaser with Draco and James. She was tall for her age with cropped auburn hair and many freckles on her nose. Their Keeper, Carolyn Stump, was a carelessly beautiful sixth year with bright blue eyes, a sinewy figure, and shoulder-length blond hair.

Draco watched Carolyn smooth her hair back from her face and put it up into a ponytail while she listened to James talk tactics. As soon as he'd finished speaking, she said, "Shall we?"

"Yeah," James agreed. "Remember, Owen and Kevin aren't going to be gentle with those Quaffles. They're a bit deflated, but don't think for a second that they're not going to sting like a son-of-a-bitch. Better to duck them than lose an arm or something. Okay, Black Team, brooms in!" He stuck his broom in the center of their huddle. Everyone copied him, "Black on three. One, two, three..."

"BLACK!"

Everyone was looking very serious as they mounted their brooms. On the other side of the pitch, the other team shouted "YELLOW!" The echo bounced around the stadium, joined by clapping and cheering from everyone in the stands.

The two blue Quaffles and the red lay on the ground at the center of the field where Prescott stood. He waved at both teams. James waved coyly back and batted his eyelashes. Laughter erupted from the stands.

Prescott shook his head, suppressing a smile, then leaned down and picked up the red Quaffle. He launched it into the air, and all the Chasers dove for it at once.

Except Draco. He was doubled over his broom after making a false start. His back felt as though he'd ripped open the half-healed flesh on the right side. Slowly, he sat up straight, rolled his right shoulder experimentally, and tried to reach his hand around the touch his back where it hurt the most. He checked his fingers for blood. Nothing but rainwater.

Once he was sure he wasn't gushing blood all over his clothes, Draco fished his bottle of potion out of his pocket and took a measured sip. The potion seemed to steady him, and again he felt better right away. Even so, he resolved to be more careful. He was still healing. He needed to take precautions or he'd end up in the Hospital Wing again. If it got to be too much for him, he'd have to stop playing whether or not James gave him grief for it.

When Draco looked up again, the game seemed to rush in around him at top speed. He hadn't even seen Prescott toss up the blue Quaffles, but his trained eye found the red Quaffle almost at once. James held it tight in his arm, flying low toward the Yellow Team's side of the pitch. Rory came out of nowhere and crashed into him, making a furious grab for the ball, but James recovered with the Quaffle still in tow. Draco took off toward the Yellow side, still wary about his injury but eager to play.

"Is that a Nimbus 2001?" asked Laura, flying near Draco as they bolted toward the Yellow Team's goal to help James.

"Oh," said Draco, "yeah!" But then he had to swerve out of the way because Owen had pelted one of the blue Quaffles at him as he sped by in the opposite direction. Draco saw Kevin catch the makeshift Bludger about twenty feet below and start off after James with a wicked grin on his face.

A second later, James rolled over sideways, water careening from his drenched clothing, to avoid the ball Kevin had thrown at him. He dropped the Quaffle, and Ryan caught it. The little boy keeping for the Yellow Team looked relieved.

"What are you doing?! Help me!" James shouted, streaking past Draco and Laura to catch up with Ryan. Draco realized he was hovering in mid-air and clenched his jaw. _Idiot idiot idiot!_

He and Laura caught up to James over on the Black side of the pitch only to watch Carolyn make a spectacular save at the right goal post. She threw the red Quaffle to Draco, who caught it and hesitated for the tiniest instant, trying to decide what to do. Rory was on him in a flash, her eyes squinting against the rain. Draco braced for impact, but the next second she'd pulled her broom up vertically to evade a blue Bludger thrown by Rundi from above. Owen swept under them and caught Rundi's Bludger. Draco watched him brandish both blue balls very suggestively until Yves rammed into him and stole one back for the Black Team.

That was long enough. Draco rocketed off to the Yellow Team's goals, flanked by James and Laura and pursued closely by Rory and Ryan. He zoomed behind the left goal and over the center, hoping to confuse Yellow's Keeper. It worked. He scored on the left goal to a round of applause and whooping from the spectators.

"Ten to zero!" Prescott called.

And so it went. The Hufflepuffs were surprisingly good, even for just playing against each other. Draco had never been a part of gameplay like this; he'd always watched from the outskirts while searching for the Snitch. Playing Chaser was a lot harder than it looked.

The rain kept them all cool, but soon Draco was soaked to the skin. His black shirt clung to his chest, perfectly outlining the two keys on his necklace and curve of his ribs. His hair hung in clusters, plastered to his forehead and dripping water into his eyes as he whizzed around the pitch after the red Quaffle, trying to avoid the Bludgers and everyone else. As the game progressed, the weather went from light mist to torrential downpour.

When James scored another ten points for Black, bringing the score to 80-30 with Black in the lead, they could barely see a foot in front of their faces through the rain. Prescott shouted for them all to come down.

"I think we're going to have to call it off, everyone," he said. The other Hufflepuffs had descended the stands to join them. "Sorry, guys, but this is getting ridiculous! We'll try again when the weather's cooperating."

Everyone was disappointed to cut the game short, but they clapped all the same. Laughing and wringing water from their clothes, the Hufflepuffs headed out of the pitch and back up the lawn to the castle.

* * *

Hermione walked back to Gryffindor tower with Ginny, having agreed to help her with her Potions essay for Slughorn in exchange for the password to the Prefects' bathroom, which turned out to be "Terrycloth."

One extremely long roll of parchment later, Hermione was feeling very ready to soak in a bath before lunch, but Vicky met her in their dormitory and invited her to the first meeting of the Gobstones club.

"It starts in a few minutes," she told Hermione excitedly. "Do you want to come? There's always room for one more, and we'd love to have you!"

Hermione tried to think of a polite way to refuse. She'd never been much for Wizarding games, and Harry and Ron would have laughed at the thought of joining the _Gobstones Club_, but they weren't here and she had no real excuse. She couldn't carry on being unsociable forever and besides, Gobstones was something nice and normal. It was an activity that didn't involve duels or dragons or, as far as she knew, danger of any kind.

In the end, Hermione told Vicky that she would meet her in the common room. After dumping her books out of her bookbag and replacing them with ink, a quill, and some parchment (she decided she'd reply to Ron's letter if things got slow), she grabbed a sweater and headed down to the common room to find Vicky.

Vicky, it transpired, had convinced Ginny to join them as well. Jason Swann and Roderick Seaton, both in their seventh year, were also in the Gobstones club, which met in one of the unused classes on the ground floor. They all traipsed down the many flights of stairs together, laughing at Jason tried to explain the rules of Gobstones to Hermione.

"We like to play Jack Stone, so after four snaps your gobstone has to be the one closest to the Jack gobstone at the center. Understand?"

"No," said Hermione. Everyone giggled.

"Okay, well a _snap_ is like your turn to get a gobstone closest to the Jack stone in the middle of the rings. Each player gets four turns to get a gobstone closest to the Jack Stone. The loser gets... well, they get sprayed in the face with this gross liquid from the Jack Stone."

"Can't imagine why anyone would be hesitant to play," Ginny said wryly.

"Well, it's a great game as long as you're winning," said Jason.

Hermione digested this information, then asked, "So it's sort of like marbles, then?"

Jason furrowed his brow. "What's 'marbles'?"

"It's a Muggle game," Hermione explained, but when everyone continued to look puzzled, she added, "Nevermind. It's not important." She changed tacks. "And there's a Gobstones team for each House?"

Roderick answered this question. "Yeah. We play each other every year for the Gobstones Cup. Not nearly as popular as the Quidditch Cup, but not everyone's good at Quidditch."

"I sympathize," Hermione said as they all started down the grand staircase.

The front doors groaned open with a rush of rain-soaked wind just as Hermione and the others reached the bottom of the stairs. It was the Hufflepuffs. By the look of their mud-stained clothes and the sound of their squelchy footsteps echoing around the Hall, they had been out at the pitch.

And there, standing among the Hufflepuffs with his broomstick slung over his shoulder, his waterlogged, long-sleeved shirt hanging heavily off his shoulders, and his dragonhide boots splattered with mud, was Malfoy.

He was talking over his shoulder to a tall, wiry boy who snorted with laughter then sobered as he pointed to where Hermione and her little group of Gryffindors stood watching them.

"Hey, Weasley!" called Cadwallader, sauntering up to the center of the Hall, halfway between the Hufflepuffs and the Gryffindors. His smile was easy, but his eyes were sharp, attentive. Hermione remembered seeing him as a Chaser on the Hufflepuff team a few years ago, then had to stifle a giggle when she thought of Luna having misidentified him as "_Bibble—no, Buggins_," during her one time as Quidditch commentator.

Ginny slipped between Hermione and Jason and walked right up to meet Cadwallader as some Hufflepuffs closed the great oak doors against the deluge outside. She had the good sense to stop a little ways from him so that she wouldn't have to crane her neck to look him in the eye.

"Hey," she said confidently, though the top of her head barely reached his shoulders. "See you got Captain this year." She nodded at the Captain's badge pinned to his pullover.

"I heard you did, too. Well done."

"Thanks, you too." Hermione knew that the congratulations were genuine, but both Ginny's and Cadwallader's tones were cool bordering on icy.

"How's the Gryffindor team this year?" Cadwallader asked. "You had trials yesterday, right?"

"That's right." Ginny shook her long red hair back and put a hand on her hip. "I'd say we're unbeatable."

"We'll just have to see about that," Cadwallader replied with a grin.

"I look forward to it." Hermione could almost feel Ginny's eyes narrow. Her voice was all challenge, all bravado. She wasn't going to let Cadwallader intimidate her, even if he had the whole of Hufflepuff standing behind him.

"Well, see you on the pitch," said Cadwallader. He let his broom fall from his shoulder and caught it smoothly as he turned to leave. The rest of the Hufflepuffs followed him past the marble staircase to the smaller one leading down to the basement, leaving only muddy footprints and the smell of damp clothing behind.

* * *

"I can't wait for the Quidditch season to start," Ryan said, pulling on a fresh shirt while simultaneously attempting to rummage around in his trunk for clean socks.

"You're not on the team yet," Prescott reminded him as he towelled his arms dry.

"Well, I can't wait for _trials_ then," amended Ryan sourly.

"That's more like it." Prescott smirked and grabbed the sweater off his bed. He tugged it over his head and pinned his Captain's badge to the front.

"Though to hear that Weasley girl talk," Ryan said, "you'd think we shouldn't bother putting together a team at all this year."

Prescott's self-assured smirk didn't falter. "I'm not worried."

Draco was tying his shoes when James opened the barrel-round door to the dormitory. He sauntered over to his trunk wearing only a fluffy pink towel around his skinny waist and another twisted up around his hair.

Ryan laughed and said, "Hey, James! I like your new hair-do!"

James smiled in a dignified way, but didn't take the bait. "It's a zoo in there," he said instead, and Draco knew he was talking about the Hufflepuff boy's bathroom. Everyone was trying to shower and get out as quickly as possible before lunch. As it was, Draco had been forced to wait a long while for a free shower stall and by the time he'd left, some of the fourth year boys were complaining about all the towels being gone. Draco wondered where James had gotten his two pink towels, but decided he'd rather not know.

"So," Prescott said, "anyone seen Smith?"

The mood in the room changed at once. Draco got the strong impression that, while Smith hadn't exactly been popular before last night, his behaviour toward Draco in the common room had left a bad taste in everyone's mouth. Draco might be the most loathed person at Hogwarts, but most of the Hufflepuffs has pretty strong feelings about trust and forgiveness. It didn't matter that most of them were still making up their minds about Draco; calling him out in front of everyone had been a major breach of Hufflepuff etiquette.

"I saw him at breakfast," offered Justin, who, like Draco, was fully dressed and sitting on his bed to wait for James, Prescott, and Ryan to finish.

"I meant after that," said Prescott. Draco looked around the room. They all shook their heads.

"That's slightly ominous," muttered Ryan, then he said, "James, do you think you could pick up the pace a bit?"

"Yeah, sorry!" James pulled off the towel around his waist with a flourish. Everyone hurried to stare in another direction.

"James can't help he's so slow," said Draco, who was gazing fixedly up at the rod of his four-poster. "It's a Hufflepuff thing. You're all a bit slow."

No one laughed. After a second, Draco looked around. They were all staring at him with slightly wounded expressions. James had stopped pulling up his trousers over heart-studded boxers to glare at Draco. Justin didn't meet his eye.

"What?!" Draco said. They'd been joking around a minute ago. What had he done wrong now?

"We're _slow_, are we?" said Ryan with a raised eyebrow.

Draco opened his mouth to defend himself, closed it, then tried again. "It was a joke! Can't you all take a joke?"

There was a very strained moment of silence. Prescott said, "You're a Hufflepuff now, too, Draco." He gave Draco a meaningful look that said very plainly that he'd crossed a line.

This couldn't keep happening. He _needed_ to fit in, needed these boys to like him. It was either that or go home, and he couldn't go home. And for the first time, Draco understood just how badly he wanted to be there, in Hufflepuff, with these boys he'd only just met. They were more than a ploy to sway public opinion; they were his friends. They were the only thing between him and the crushing loneliness he'd felt before he'd met them. He wasn't about to let himself screw this up, too.

"You're right. Old habits die hard." Draco felt as if pressure of the situation were forcing his body down into the mattress of his bed. He dropped his gaze to his shoes. His hand moved reflexively to his necklace, and he drew the two keys from under his sweater, rubbing his thumb over each of their grooved blades in turn. "I'm sorry."

More silence. Then Prescott said, "James. _Today!"_ which broke the tension.

James made an impatient noise. "I'm going, I'm going!" Draco heard a zip as James fastened his trousers. "You can't rush perfection." They all laughed at a little too heartily to cover up the awkwardness.

Prescott's trainers appeared in Draco's line of vision. "Hey, Draco," he said quietly as the rest of the boys prepared to leave, "don't sweat it. Come on, I'm starving."

* * *

**A/N: **Thank you so much for reading, and please don't forget to review!

Another special thank you is in order for itsraa, whose reviews have offered a fresh perspective and helped me improve this story. Everyone go read Eccentric Order!

—Abbs


	8. Chapter 8

**Disclaimer: Harry Potter is property of J.K. Rowling and Warner Bros Entertainment Inc. This story is not written for profit and no copyright infringement is intended.**

**A/N: **A special thank you to **Nicole Zollos** and **itsraa** for betaing this chapter. They are both amazing, and I am eternally grateful for their guidance.

* * *

**Part I: A Lonely Heart Cannot Atone**

**Chapter 8 **

* * *

Gobstones turned out the be rather fun. Hermione got squirted with a lot of the slimy, foul-smelling liquid from the stones, but it was worth it. She didn't have time to wash up before lunch, so she ended up heading over to the Great Hall with the rest of the Gobstones Club with only a quick cleaning charm to get the worst of the ooze off of her hair and face. Still, no one else at the Gryffindor table was too keen to sit near the Gobstones Club while they ate.

Ginny was again immersed in talk of Quidditch with Vicky, her new Keeper. "Cadwallader is all talk," Ginny said. "I'd be surprised if he could scrape together enough Quidditch players to even _have_ a team this year."

Vicky, who was slicing an apple into clean eighths with her wand, looked thoughtful. "I don't know. That blond girl, Carolyn, is supposed to be a pretty great Keeper."

"Better than you?" Ginny asked wryly, eyebrows raised.

"I don't think that's the point."

"Is that the pretty one?" Ritchie said, butting in on the conversation and stealing a slice of apple.

Vicky sneered. "'The pretty one'?"

"Hey, dollface, I call 'em like I see 'em," said Ritchie, his mouth full of apple. "But don't worry. I like you best."

"That's a relief," Vicky said, rolling her eyes. When Ritchie reached for another slice of apple, she smacked his hand away.

"Anyway," Ritchie said, rubbing his hand, "I heard she's been playing since she could ride a broom. She wasn't on the team last year because her mum wanted her to keep her head down."

"Smart mum," Hermione said distractedly, twirling her spoon in her stew, and everyone looked at her. "What?"

Ginny and Vicky exchanged a meaningful look. "You're right, Hermione," Vicky said.

The conversation moved on, but Hermione's part in it ended there. While she finished her stew, she decided to write back to Ron. She pulled out his letter, reread it, then took the paper and writing supplies out of her bookbag to reply.

_Dear Ron,_

_Looks like that visit between now and October is a no-go. We all knew McGonagall wouldn't go for it._

_I can't say I'm excited to testify at the Malfoy trials. As much as I'd like to see Malfoy's dad back in Azkaban where he belongs, I'm not so sure about his mum. Did she even take the Dark Mark? And Malfoy has always been a prat, but you should see him now, Ron. It looks like Hufflepuff's really agreeing with him. I don't know whether or not to trust it, but he doesn't seem to be pulling a stunt or anything._

_I can't help but wonder what he would have been like if he'd been sorted into Hufflepuff to begin with. There are pure-bloods in every House, after all. Maybe he didn't really belong in Slytherin. Or he used to, but he doesn't anymore. That sounds crazy, doesn't it? I know it seems far-fetched and he's totally awful and I know that, but I've never seen him like this before._

_Anyway, hope to hear from you soon! I can't wait until Hogsmeade in October!_

_Thinking of you,_

_Hermione_

Hermione looked up from writing to see half of the people at the Gryffindor table gone. Ginny, Vicky, and Ritchie had moved down the table to give Hermione some privacy while she wrote, and even they had finished eating.

"We were waiting for you," Ginny explained when Hermione caught her eye.

"Oh, don't worry about it. I'm going to take this letter to Pig, then I'll see you in the common room, okay?"

Ginny leaned in a little and whispered, "Are you going to _take a bath_ later?"

"Yes," Hermione said with a laugh and an embarrassed glance at Ritchie. "I'll sneak in while everyone's at dinner."

"Hermione the rule-breaker!" Ginny squeezed Hermione's shoulder. "See you later!" They left. Soon after, Hermione folded her letter, packed her things, and started for the Owlery at the top of West Tower.

Pig had a whole section of the Owlery to himself, not because there were only a few owls around, but because he seemed to annoy them so much that they didn't want to be anywhere near him. Instead, they bunched two to a perch on the other side of the circular stone room and watched him imperiously, ruffling their feathers in distaste.

When he saw Hermione, Pig began whizzing around, hooting excitedly. Hermione tried and failed several times to catch him, her Mary-Janes skating around on the slippery stone floor and her frustration mounting with each unsuccessful attempt. It was drafty and wet in the Owlery with its windows open to the elements, and the wind howled through every few seconds, blowing in the rain. Even with her sweater on, Hermione was freezing.

"Pig, _please _come here!" she shouted, hugging herself and rubbing her arms, half impatient, half worried she'd catch cold if she stayed much longer. Pig just gleefully zoomed high out of reach.

"Did you just call that owl 'Pig'?" asked a voice behind her. Startled, Hermione jumped and slid backwards, overbalancing. She swung her arms wildly around her, trying to keep from falling, but whoever it was caught her and set her upright again.

"I seem to be doing a lot of that," a familiar voice said over a fresh wail from the storm. The current of wind misted Hermione with cold rain, plastering her fringe to her forehead.

"_Malfoy!_" Her eyes narrowed. Straightening her sweater as if adjusting her armor before a battle, Hermione turned around, ready for a fight. But Malfoy was just standing there holding a rolled-up copy of _The Quibbler_ in one hand and a bright violet envelope in the other.

He grinned. "Guilty as charge—Whoa, hey!" Hermione guessed she must have been looking as irritated and suspicious as she felt, because Malfoy took a few unsteady steps back from her, his hands in front of him in a gesture of supplication. "Granger, calm down. I'm sorry I scared you, alright? I only came up here to... mail off an order."

Hermione was suddenly very aware that she smelled like gobstone stink-juice and hoped that the scent of damp owl pellets would mask it. The last thing she needed was Malfoy running off to tell _Teen Witch_ that she smelled like a Mountain Troll.

Smoothing her hair back off of her face, Hermione glared at the magazine. "Is that a _Quibbler_?"

"Yeah," he said, holding it out for her inspection. "One of the girls at lunch had a copy and I thought I'd... Anyway, yes, it's a _Quibbler_."

_What on earth was Malfoy ordering from _The Quibbler?

Hermione struggled to recover herself. So Malfoy was in the Owlery, and he was ordering something from _The Quibbler. _So what? Sure it was weird, but no weirder than everything else Malfoy had gotten up to the past few days.

Her teeth were starting to chatter, and she could feel the cold damp seeping in through her sweater. She looked around, trying to locate Pig again, and was just on the verge of giving up and using one of the school owls when Malfoy spoke again.

"Do you need that owl? Pig, was it?" He pointed up into the rafters where Pig was half-hidden behind a heap of dried owl droppings.

"No, I can just—"

"I can get him for you. Can you call him?"

"Oh," said Hermione, disarmed. Long experience told her to be suspicious of Malfoy's offer to help her, but how could he be planning anything devious by offering to capture Pig for her? "Um, okay."

Malfoy stuffed his copy of _The Quibbler _into his trousers pocket, and they both turned their attention to Ron's owl.

"Pig, get down here. Come on!"

At once, Pig took flight. He swooped down over them and around the Owlery, flying low then high then low again, up to his old tricks.

Malfoy rubbed his hands together to warm them up and watched the owl rocket around for a bit, then, just once, his hand darted into the air. Hermione's eyes widened incredulously. There, in Malfoy's outstretched hand, was a struggling, hooting Pig.

"Wow. Impressive," said Hermione before she could stop herself.

"I'm an impressive guy," he said, handing Pig over to her and going back to the school owls. "You're welcome."

"Thank you," Hermione said, watching him peruse the owls. "Don't you... don't you have an owl of your own?" Malfoy chose a tawny and began attaching the brightly-coloured envelope to its leg with a bit of twine.

"I do. My mother's got him right now, though. Her owl..." His sentence faded away on the whine of the wind. Hermione got the impression that whatever had happened to Malfoy's mother's owl, it wasn't good. "Her owl died," he finished, confirming Hermione's suspicions. "She's borrowing mine."

She wasn't sure what to say, so she busied herself fixing her own letter to Pig. After a few strained moments of silence, however, Hermione felt compelled to say something else, if only to break the tension she felt. "So, a purple envelope, huh?"

Malfoy's back shook with his laughter. "Right. Well, it came with the magazine. It's for mail orders, you know."

Hermione resisted the urge to ask him what he was ordering. It was none of her business, and he didn't seem eager to reveal any details.

There was another little pause, then she said, "Hufflepuff?"

He turned to face her, his eyes flashing. "What _about_ Hufflepuff?" Behind him, the tawny owl flapped its wings in agitation and took off through the window, Malfoy's mail order in tow. He didn't so much as glance in its direction.

Now it was Hermione's turn to take an unsteady step back. "I didn't mean... It's just... You don't think it's odd?"

Malfoy's face softened considerably, though he still regarded her as if unsure whether he could trust her or not. Hermione thought this was rather rich coming from Malfoy, but waited for his reply. She was so curious at the abrupt change in personality she'd observed in him since school began, and she didn't want to miss this opportunity to learn anything she could about it.

"You saw how the Slytherins were. They think I'm weak," he said, cradling his arms defensively stuffing his hands into his pockets. "Hufflepuff doesn't think of me that way. They like me. And not because I'm rich or because I'm a pure-blood. They like _me_."

How could anyone, _anyone_, like Malfoy? That was beyond her comprehension. He was an awful little boy who'd done awful things to good people. He was a bully. He was a Death Eater, however repentant he may seem.

"You mean, they like what they _know of you_, right?" Her gaze flickered down to his left arm, to the brand she knew was there, concealed by his sleeve.

He'd noticed. She saw his hands ball into fists and his jaw set as the famous sneer twisted the features of his face. Maybe he hadn't changed so much after all.

"Listen, don't bother," he said. "You wouldn't understand." He turned his back on her and headed for the door.

Brought up short, Hermione felt anger and uncertainty and disappointment well up inside of her. Did he really think she couldn't guess at his motives? Or were his reasons really so complex that he genuinely felt they would be beyond her scope of comprehension? Not bloody likely.

"Understand _what?"_ she called after him.

He didn't look back. "You're going to kill that owl if you don't stop squeezing him like that."

Hermione looked down in confusion to see Pig's eyes bulging, his wings fluttering feebly against her grip. She released him, and he sped out of the window as fast as he could. When she returned her gaze to the entrance of the Owlery, Malfoy was gone.

* * *

To avoid thinking about how terribly things had gone in the Owlery with Granger, Draco immersed himself in his homework all afternoon. The Hufflepuff common room was loud and there was no shortage of distractions, but he preferred it to the Library or even his dormitory. People socializing without pretence, completely at ease, was still something of a novelty for him. He found that he enjoyed it.

Sitting in the corner with a bunch of flutterby bushes crowded around him, he toiled away at his Potions essay. No one bothered him, but after a while, Carolyn Stump made her way over with her own pile of homework and joined him.

They didn't speak; she just found her place in her Charms textbook and began taking notes, tucking her hair behind her ear every so often. James brought over a couple of Butterbeers, setting one down near Carolyn and another in front of Draco, then disappeared again.

When Draco had finally put the finishing touches on his essay, he popped the cork on his Butterbeer and took a long celebratory drink. He opened Carolyn's for her, too, hoping she'd join him, but she just smiled and thanked him before returning to her homework.

Stretching, Draco looked around the room for a clock to check the time. An old mantel clock over the fireplace read 5:13PM which meant dinner had started already. Why was everyone just hanging about? He approached Prescott over by the fire and asked him.

"Oh, we have dinner in the common room on Sundays sometimes," Prescott replied breezily. "You can go to the Great Hall if you want. I bet there'll be a few of us there."

Draco digested this. Dinner in the common room? "Can we do that?" he asked.

"It appears we can," said Prescott, standing up and nodding pointedly over Draco's shoulder. Draco turned to see James leading a troupe of Hufflepuffs down the ladder into the common room. He wore such a goofy grin as he balanced a platter of chicken legs in one hand that Draco couldn't help but return his smile.

"Ladies and gents, dinner is served!" James called to the room at large, sliding the dish onto a table in the middle of the room, and everyone laughed and cheered. Soon, other dishes joined the first: plates of sandwiches, tureens of stew, jugs of pumpkin juice.

"This is fantastic!" Draco said as James handed him a chicken drum and a napkin.

"Try not to get too excited," James replied, biting into a sandwich.

"We're practically next door to the kitchens," said Prescott, helping himself to a ham sandwich. "It has its perks."

Draco ate his chicken slowly, watching James play host as he sashayed around the room with platters of food, offering people sandwiches and Butterbeers, sometimes hanging around to chat for a few minutes.

"Listen, Prescott, can I ask you a question?"

Mouth full of ham sandwich, Prescott nodded.

"You and James are in seventh year."

Swallowing a half-chewed bite, Prescott said, "That wasn't a question." Draco glared at him, and Prescott grinned, a little dollop of mustard smeared into the corner of his mouth. "Yeah, we're seventh years. What of it?"

There were a lot of people milling around, and it seemed that a full-blown party was well on its way to fruition. It made Draco nervous. He didn't want anyone to overhear their conversation and get the wrong idea. Leaning in close, Draco hesitated, unsure of how to proceed. Prescott, observing Draco's efforts at discretion, raised his eyebrows and opted out of another bite of his sandwich.

"Wayne Hopkins was in your year, too?"

Prescott masked his surprise by wiping his mouth on his sleeve. "Yes."

Yes. Wayne Hopkins had been a Hufflepuff in his sixth year. That was something. Now that he had another tiny piece of the puzzle, Draco's desire to put a story with the name only grew bolder. "Can you tell me about him at all?" he asked. "Did you know him well?"

Prescott didn't answer at once. Instead, he gazed across the room at James, who was joking around with a few first years by transfiguring the Butterbeers they'd sneaked away from the ice chest into baby bottles.

"You should ask James," Prescott said finally, turning to Draco. "James and Wayne were best friends. They grew up together."

_Best friends. _"I didn't know that. Do you… Do you know how he died?" Draco knew he was pushing his luck, but the curiosity was almost too much to bear.

"I didn't ask. James knows. He was there." Prescott downed the rest of his Butterbeer and popped the lid on another, his expression grim. "You should ask him."

"I will."

"Maybe later, though. Wait until you know him a little better."

"Alright."

Prescott fished another Butterbeer out of the ice chest for Draco and thrust it into his hands. "Good." He walked away toward the center of the room, where he climbed on top of a desk and called for silence. Eventually, the common room quieted down.

"A toast," he said, and everyone raised their Butterbeers or glasses of pumpkin juice. "To good food, good company, and good times! May they never be in short supply!"

Everyone shouted some variation of "Here, here!" and drank, but Prescott held up his Butterbeer again.

"And to absent friends, never forgotten, sorely missed," he continued, his deep voice carrying through the room. "May we always keep them near in our hearts."

Everyone drank again, their expressions more subdued, and Prescott was just stooping to get down when James jumped up onto the desk to join him.

"And to sappy toasts!" he cheered, stealing Prescott's Butterbeer and raising it high overhead. "May those be the last we endure!"

The common room erupted into laughter, and Draco could see Prescott mouthing "Okay, okay," as he climbed down from the desk.

"I thought it was sweet," said Rory, Ryan's twin sister, who had come up beside Draco while he watched Prescott and James. "'To absent friends,'" she said, "and to new ones." She smiled at him.

"To new friends," Draco echoed, and they clinked Butterbeers and drank, then she left him alone again. He waited until she'd slipped out of sight to add, "And absent ones." Draco stuffed his hand into his pocket and felt the rumpled newspaper clipping there, then closed his eyes and let the sound of a hundred happy voices fill the emptiness expanding in his chest.

_They are gone,_ he thought, _but you're still here, so start acting like it._

After dinner and with the common room still bustling with activity around him, Draco returned to his pile of homework. Carolyn had cleared away her schoolbooks and homework, having apparently completed her Charms notes, and he saw her chatting with some other sixth years at the opposite end of the room. One of the girls had an advance copy of _Teen Witch_ in hand, a magazine which Draco had loathed ever since Pansy had taken out her subscription back in their third year.

There was something different about this issue, though. It didn't seem to feature the usual blurry photo of Harry Potter or some other war hero scowling as they entered or exited a building.

Upon closer inspection, Draco realized that the two girls smiling out at him from the cover were the Greengrass sisters. With their perfectly coiffed black hair and their immaculately tailored witches' robes, Daphne and Astoria were as familiar to him as anyone from the long list of his family's pure-blooded acquaintances. After all, he'd known them since childhood.

Of all the pure-blood families in the Malfoy's aqquaintance, the Greengrasses were the only ones to have come out the other end of the war smelling like a rose. The press had always loved them for the very antics that kept them only at the farthest fridge of pure-blood society before the war, but that never stopped them from exploiting their… unique circumstances. Draco shook his head, his lip curled, and went back to his homework.

He had just pulled a fresh sheet of parchment from his bookbag and settled in for another essay when James and Ryan tossed their bookbags onto the table. Draco's Butterbeer teetered precariously.

"What are you working on?" asked Ryan.

By way of reply, Draco flipped his book closed, keeping his place with a finger. The title read, _Home Life and Social Habits of British Muggles, Volume 7_.

James clutched at his heart in shock. "_Muggle Studies?!"_ he gasped. Ryan's mouth hung open in stunned amazement.

"It was a condition of my return to Hogwarts. I have to take N.E.W.T. Level Muggle Studies. Stop laughing!" James was beside himself in hysterics. Ryan still looked confounded.

"I'm sorry! I'm sorry!" guffawed James, wiping tears of mirth from his eyes. "Whew. Someone told me you were in Muggle Studies, but I didn't actually believe them. I did _not_ see that one coming, did you, Ryan?" When Ryan didn't answer, James looked around at him. "Ryan, close your mouth, dear."

"Oh, yeah. No, I didn't. Sorry, I'm just sort of…" Ryan trailed off, his expression fading into seriousness for a moment as he seemed to stare through Draco, his gaze far away and unreadable. Then, with a tiny shake of his head, he pulled back. His face molded itself into one of a suitably incredulous grin. "_Muggle Studies? Really?!"_ he said with a chuckle.

"Thanks, guys." Draco reopened _Home Life and Social Habits_ with a scowl.

"Oh, come on! Don't be like that." James said, taking a seat next to Draco. "You have to admit, that's funny!" He unhooked the clasp on his bag and withdrew his Potions book. "Have you done Slughorn's essay yet?"

"Just finished it before dinner," Draco grumbled. He wasn't sure he'd forgiven James yet. After all, it wasn't as though he hadn't picked up on the joke: Draco Malfoy taking Muggle Studies was like a Dementor taking up ballet. Their incredulity was just one more reminder that not so deep below the surface, everyone—including his new "friends"—still thought of him as an arrogant, Muggle-hating blood purist.

After much whining and procrastination, James and Ryan started in on their homework, though neither of them got very far. Every so often, James would suppress a chuckle, and Draco would shoot him a dirty look, then both Ryan and James would go to pieces and have to spend five minutes trying to settle down enough to get back to work.

Around nine o'clock, James decided enough was enough, and Ryan and Draco agreed. Ryan stuffed his half-finished essay into his Potions book as if it had done him great personal injury. The three of them retreated to the dormitory, followed soon after by Prescott and Justin. Smith had the curtains drawn around his four-poster. Apparently he had decided it was safe to sleep in the same room as Draco after all. They didn't bother to lower their voices.

"Did you change your colours yet?" Prescott asked, nodding at Draco's trunk.

It took Draco a second to understand his meaning. "Oh, on my uniforms? No, not yet."

"Hufflepuffs wear yellow and black," James said with a smirk as he changed into his pyjamas.

Draco gestured around the room with a "No kidding!" expression. Sniggering again, James murmured something that sounded like "_Muggle Studies!"_ Draco bristled, but forced himself to let it go. It _was_ a little funny. Or it would have been if it wasn't so depressing. That, and he had so much catching up to do that he was sure he'd outright fail the course in the first semester.

Draco pulled out his ties, sweaters, and robes, tapping each of them in turn with his wand until a pile of black and yellow clothing littered his bed. When he was done, everyone except Smith, who hadn't uttered a single word, gathered around to have a look. It felt like something final, something positive and definite.

James slapped Draco on the shoulder (luckily, it was the left shoulder, but it hurt all the same). "Now you're really one of us."

"Ha!"

The sound had come from behind Smith's curtains. Draco couldn't think of it as a laugh; there was no mirth to it.

"Something to contribute, Smith?" said James.

Smith pulled back his curtains to look at them all, his face twisted up in a sneer. "'One of us'," he quoted. "That's rich."

"Ah, Christ," Prescott said. "Not this again."

"Yes, this again! I don't know if you're all suicidal or if you've just forgotten who this person—" Smith pointed at Draco, "—is, but I can't pretend to be as blind as you." He threw a newspaper to the ground at Prescott's feet. "Anyway, there's a very interesting article in the _Prophet_ about Malfoy's upcoming trial. You might want to read it." His eyes caught Draco's briefly, and it couldn't have been clearer that he thought Draco was scum. The feeling was mutual.

Prescott stooped and gathered the shuffled pages of the _Prophet_ from the ground, looking grim. He found the article Smith had mentioned and scanned it with his eyebrows raised, then made a noise of disgust and handed the newspaper to James, who didn't bother to glance at it before giving it to Draco.

"Ministry Prepares for the Trail of the Decade," said the headline on page two.

_Members of the Malfoy family, former Death Eaters of both the First and Second Wizarding Wars, are due to stand trial in the coming months on various charges, including the use of the Unforgivable Curses on Muggles and Wizards, treason, harbouring a fugitive, kidnapping, and attempted murder. _

_Harry Potter, hero of the Second Wizarding War, was quoted yesterday evening on his way out of the Ministry where he's now training to head the Auror Office, saying, "The Malfoy family definitely has a lot to answer for." _

_When asked if the rumours of Narcissa Malfoy's role in Harry's defeat of Lord Voldemort in May of this year were true, Potter preferred not to comment. "You're going to cover the trial, right? Well, you can wait until then."_

_Lucius Malfoy, patriarch of the ancient pure-blood family and a formerly prominent member of the Wizarding community, spent time in Azkaban last year after his capture and arrest following Battle of the Department of Mysteries. His fall from acclaim could hardly have been more shocking to most of Wizarding Britain. Mr. Malfoy had been a long-time friend of Cornelius Fudge, former Minister for Magic, and a generous donor to numerous charitable causes. _

_But no more. This reporter wonders how the disgraced family has managed to stay out of Azkaban thus far, but again, Harry Potter has an answer ready for us, dear readers: "Innocent until proven guilty."_

_Draco Malfoy, son of Lucius and Narcissa, is back at Hogwarts to repeat his seventh year after..._

_(For more, turn to page 7.)_

Draco didn't need to read any more to know this was just another in a long procession of articles dedicated to defaming his evil Death Eater family. But this wasn't about the article, really; those were a knut for a cauldron-full. It was that the only goal Smith could possibly have in sharing the _Prophet_'s article with Draco and the others was to get a rise out of Draco, and the knowledge that Smith had actually attempted to pick a fight with him—_again—_achieved what the article alone could not. Draco redoubled his efforts to control his temper, control his expression and breathing and thoughts. It wasn't easy.

Wasn't it enough that Draco had been ostracized by Slytherin, bullied and blasted open and attacked openly by those who had once feared and respected him? Wasn't it enough that his family was smeared across the headlines? That he was to stand trial for his crimes? That his _mother_ would have to answer for…

Wasn't it enough that he was _trying_?

Draco folded the _Prophet_ and threw it back onto Smith's bed. Without a word, he crossed to the dormitory door and left the room, intending to head for the boys' bathroom to splash some water on his face and calm down.

He barely made it out into the hall before he collapsed into the wall just outside the door. There was a cold sweat on his brow, and his body felt weak and jittery. His lungs were on fire, something between a panic attack and internal bleeding. Every breath felt like a knife twisting into his gut, his back, just below his ribs. Draco dug around in his robes for the little bottle of potion Madam Pomfrey had given him. He took a sip and felt the now-familiar sensation of cold water flooding his insides. Sighing deeply, he let the weight of it drag him to the floor, then coughed a little, stifling the sound so that no one would hear.

Back in the dormitory, Smith and James had begun exchanging insults as soon as Draco was gone from their sight.

"What in the name of Helga's frilly knickers did you do that for, you great ugly prat?" hissed James barely loud enough for Draco to hear, and Draco imagined James standing over Smith aggressively.

"Oh, come on," Smith shot back. "You all know he's an evil git. What are you idiots playing at being friendly with an arse like that?"

Draco heard Prescott's heavy steps as he crossed the room. There was a gasp and more creaking then a thud that sounded like Smith hitting the ground. "Get up and say that again, Smith!" growled Prescott.

"Guys, stop it!" Justin said in a whisper.

"Shut it, Justin! If you don't want to be involved with this, go to bed!" came James' angry reply.

Smith wasn't giving up. "Justin, _he's_ part of the reason you had to spend all last year with your grandparents in hiding! He's a Death Eater! He wants to _kill_ people like you!"

There was another thud and a grunt. It sounded like Prescott had Smith pinned against the wall now.

"I don't care what the stupid _Prophet _says about Draco _or_ his family. He's here, and he's trying to start again, and he's a Hufflepuff now. That's all I need to know," Prescott said.

"Yeah, he's here," Smith said, "and I wouldn't be surprised if he killed us all in our sleep!"

Ripping paper. Someone was tearing up the _Prophet_. "I'm with Prescott," James said between rips. "This is all rubbish. _You're_ the git. At least he had the guts to come back to school this year. At least he's _trying_. We owe him the chance to prove everyone wrong."

Ryan spoke up for the first time, then. "Smith can think what he likes, James. We all know he's a sodding coward anyway. Smith, I saw you pushing first years out of the way before the Battle of Hogwarts, Smith. You couldn't wait to get out of there. I bet you were the first one through that secret passage in the Room of Requirement, weren't you? Prescott, let him go. He's not worth it."

Smith stammered a bit before answering. "I may not have wanted to die for Potter, but at least I didn't try to _kill _him." It got very quiet after that. "Malfoy duelled him back in sixth year. Bet he tried to kill him then. And didn't he try to kill Dumbledore as well? He's evil, and I, for one, am not going to pretend that I've forgotten that fact."

Draco pressed his head into his hands. Smith was right. He'd done all of those things. How could he argue? How could anything Smith had ever done even compare?

"I can't believe you," Prescott said. "You don't even know him."

"Oh, and you do?" said Smith, his confidence picking up again. "I don't _want_ to know him! You're all so quick to defend him. What do you even know about him, really?"

Prescott said, "I don't want to hear any more."

"See? You know I'm right! You know it!"

"I'm through arguing with you. It's late. I'm going to bed."

There were a few footsteps, then a bed creaking.

"What about Wayne?"

Deadly silence. It went unbroken, on and on like the stillness after snowfall.

Wayne Hopkins, whose bed Draco slept in, who had carved his name into the wood of the bed frame. The boy who died in the Battle of Hogwarts. Draco didn't even know what he looked like. He hardly knew anything about him, except that he was dead.

_What a terrible thing to be remembered for_, Draco thought. He felt a knot forming in his throat.

"How can you use Wayne against—"

"Draco didn't kill Wayne," said James, cutting across Prescott. There was none of his usual self in his voice. He was level, emotionless even. "And he's not evil. He's just a person. A _person_, Smith.

"Maybe he didn't make brilliant choices, but maybe he didn't _start out _with brilliant options to begin with. We don't know. That's the point. We don't know. But what I do know, and I'm just speaking for myself, is that I've seen him trying so hard to make something good for himself here. You don't have the right to take that away from him. None of us do."

More silence.

"You're all wrong about him. He'll betray you in the end. You'll see."

"Yeah, Smith," said Prescott. "I guess we will." There was another pause, then, "I think that's enough shouting for one night, don't you?"

Ryan spoke up again. "What about Dra—"

"He'll come back when he's ready. Come on. It's late, and we've got classes in the morning."

The light under the door dimmed into shadow and there was no more talking. Draco sat for what felt like a long time with his head in his hands in the darkened hall outside of his dormitory.

"Draco?" It was Rory. He couldn't see much more than her outline against the light from the bathrooms at the end of the hall, but he knew it was her. As she approached, she combed her long, black hair out of her face with her fingers to see him better. "Is that you?"

Draco sniffed and hurried to wipe his face on his shirtsleeve. "Yeah, Rory. Hi. What are you doing up?"

Rory waved her hand, and Draco saw that she held a toothbrush and toothpaste. "Forgot to brush my teeth."

"Oh."

Pointing at the door to his dormitory, Rory said, "They're not trying to play hide and seek again, are they, because I told James that that room is too small—"

"No," said Draco, smiling in spite of everything, "nothing like that."

"Then what?"

"It's, uh... It's pretty crowded in there," Draco said.

She nodded her understanding. "Smith being a prat?"

Draco shrugged by way of reply.

"I know what he's been saying," Rory said. "He even went to see the Headmistress, trying to get you chucked out. Listen—" she leaned down to him, and her breath smelled like fresh mint when she spoke, "—don't let him get to you. The rest of us know who you _really_ are."

Draco didn't know what to say. He just stared up into her blue-green eyes faintly glinting like polished jewels in the light from down the hall. She held his gaze for a long moment.

"Well, 'night," she said, "and good luck." Turning away, she headed off toward her dormitory.

"Goodnight," Draco called back, but she was already gone. Draco gave himself a five-second count to pull himself together before he stood up and went back inside his room. When he opened the door, the only noise was the soft, muffled breathing of his roommates. Draco shut the door very slowly, padded to his bed, and pulled on his pyjamas. Once under the covers, he brought the newspaper clipping close to his face and, one by one, read the names on the list. He stopped only to glance at the carved wood of his bedpost when he came to Wayne Hopkins, and fell asleep still clutching the list in his hand.

* * *

**A/N: **Thank you so much for reading, and please don't forget to review!

—Abbs


	9. Chapter 9

**Disclaimer: Harry Potter is property of J.K. Rowling and Warner Bros Entertainment Inc. This story is not written for profit and no copyright infringement is intended.**

**A/N: **A special thank you to **Nicole Zollos** and **itsraa** for betaing this chapter. They are both amazing, and I am eternally grateful for their guidance.

* * *

**Part I: A Lonely Heart Cannot Atone**

**Chapter 9 **

* * *

Hermione tilted her head back against the stone rim of the gigantic bath in the Prefects' Bathroom. Lilac, pink, and blue bubbles piled up around her like little candy-coloured mountains, and steam rose off of the water like autumn mist. The heat seeped into her bones, untying the knots of a stressful week, melting through the aches of old injuries and sore joints. And at least the aroma of the bath had overpowered the smell of the Gobstone stink-juice.

Everyone was at dinner, her homework was done, and she was more relaxed than she had been for ages, but Hermione still couldn't shake her encounter with Malfoy in the Owlery.

"_Hufflepuff doesn't think of me that way," _he'd told her. "_They like me. And not because I'm rich or because I'm a pure-blood. They like _me."

How did Hufflepuff not find Malfoy's sudden appearance among them, as she'd said, _odd_? They accepted him. Of course they had. Hufflepuffs were known for being accepting. But they weren't pushovers. They weren't gullible or stupid. Only Slytherins thought that way about Hufflepuffs. So what did they see in Malfoy that she didn't?

She remembered him laughing and throwing the Quaffle around at breakfast that morning. He hadn't even looked himself without his patented Malfoy sneer. Was he really so desperate for a break from the bullying, or was it something else?

A voice whispered in her head that maybe Malfoy had just been waiting for a chance to get out from under the thumb of all of those expectations. And there _were_ expectations—she knew there were. His family expected him to uphold their pure-blood traditions. Slytherin expected him to... what? They seemed to want him to slither off to Azkaban without a word in his defence.

And she expected him to hate her, to ridicule her and strut around with his nose in the air like he'd done when they were children. But, so far, at least, he'd defied all expectations. Maybe he wasn't just trying to look good for the press. Maybe he was trying to make a new start. Could that be true? Did he deserve it?

She spent a lot of time thinking about Malfoy lately. It made her feel slightly petty to judge him so harshly when she knew much more about him than just the evil, conniving things he'd done. He hadn't actually killed Dumbledore, had he? He'd tried, yes. But Dumbledore himself had said, "_Forgive me, Draco, but they have been feeble attempts. So feeble, to be honest, that I wonder whether you heart has been really in it."_

Whether his heart was really in it. Had it been? How could she find out?

Dumbledore had tried to persuade Malfoy to join the Order. He'd wanted to help Malfoy. He thought Malfoy was worth saving.

Kingsley Shacklebolt said it best in that secret radio program, _Potter Watch_. "_We're all human, aren't we? Every human life is worth the same, and worth saving."_

Should Malfoy be afforded the same courtesy, or should they condemn him? No one was going to save him now. Maybe he was trying to save himself.

Hermione slipped under the water and tried to block out the world. She stayed under for a full minute before breaking the surface through a massive heap of bubbles. Her giggles echoed off of the stone walls, but their sound had been joined by something else. Someone else was laughing, too.

"Myrtle!" Hermione shrieked. The ghost of a spotty, bespectacled girl hovered around the stack of towels, her face contorted with cackling laughter. Hermione gathered up all the bubbles she could reach and stacked them around her naked body. "What are you doing here, Myrtle?"

"I'm visiting," Myrtle said simply.

"_Visiting?"_ Hermione knew Myrtle could go anywhere in the castle, but she usually confined herself to her bathroom, thus making it much easier to avoid her. She wasn't exactly good company.

"Yes. It's boring in my bathroom, you know. No one ever goes in there."

Hermione knew all too well why Moaning Myrtle's bathroom was always deserted. It was an ideal place to hide because nobody would ever choose to go in there. Harry, Ron, and Hermione had once brewed Polyjuice Potion in Myrtle's bathroom for a whole month without detection, and no one had found the entrance to the Chamber of Secrets since Tom Riddle had been at school, presumably owing to the fact that every single person who came into contact with Moaning Myrtle immediately wished they hadn't.

Except for…

A heady rush of excitement crashed over Hermione. Hadn't Malfoy confided in Myrtle once? Harry had seen Malfoy and Myrtle together on the Marauder's Map. Hadn't Malfoy been crying, and Myrtle been comforting him? Maybe the world's most annoying schoolgirl ghost could have some useful insight on Malfoy's strange behavior.

Myrtle had drifted closer while Hermione was lost in thought. "I see your tail's gone. That's a shame. I liked it," she said, suppressing another round of sniggering.

"Yeah," said Hermione vaguely. How should she begin? "Listen Myrtle, do you remember a boy named Draco Malfoy—"

"What about Draco?" Myrtle was looking curious and—could it be?—protective.

"He's back this year. Did you hear he's in Hufflepuff House now?"

Myrtle flipped over onto her back and pretended to swim through the bath (though, of course, her arms moved right through the water without disturbing its surface) and said nothing.

"What… Harry said that you and Malfoy were friends. Is that true?"

"Yes. We had so much in common."

Hermione's brow furrowed. "Like what?"

Turning onto her stomach, Myrtle propped her head up on her hands to glare at Hermione. "Why should I tell _you_?"

That was a tough one. As Hermione tried to come up with an answer, Myrtle twirled her finger through the water to no effect.

"I'm his friend, too," Hermione said finally.

A mischievous grin curled Myrtle's lips. It was as though she'd been waiting for Hermione to say something to that effect. "Then you can just ask him! Since you're such great _friends_ and all."

"He wouldn't tell me something like that."

"That's because he doesn't trust you like he trusts me." Myrtle sat up, folding her arms over her chest. "_Friends._ Ha! He doesn't even _like _you," she scoffed.

"He told you that?"

Myrtle's cackle rang through the bathroom. "No one has to tell me that! It's obvious!"

"Okay, so we're not friends," Hermione admitted. "But that doesn't mean this isn't important. Myrtle, I need—"

Just then, the lock at the entrance of the Prefect's Bathroom clicked, and the door began to creak open.

Her wand, laid neatly on top of her clothes, was too far away to be of any help. Panicking, Hermione cried, "There's someone in here!" But it was too late. A curly-haired Ravenclaw boy who Hermione recognized as Eli Cresswell had already come in and caught a glimpse of her in the bath and Myrtle hovering nearby.

To his credit, however, Eli immediately froze in place and shut his eyes tight. "Sorry! Sorry! I didn't know there was anyone in here. You didn't put the thing on the door!"

While Myrtle broke out into peals of laughter, Hermione stared at him in bewilderment. "What _thing?"_ she demanded, scooping bubbles toward her.

"The thing! The _thing_, you know! The _someone's-in-here-so-don't-just-barge-in_ thing!" Eli, eyes still closed, felt around the doorframe for a moment before producing a little doorknob sign which read, "Occupied".

Hermione could have kicked herself. How could she have forgotten the _thing?!_

"Well, I locked the door," she said in an effort to save face. "Wasn't that enough?"

"The door's _always _locked! It's password-protected, Hermione!"

"Myrtle, could you go? Just go. Please?" Hermione shouted over Myrtle's loud giggles.

"You want me to leave you alone?" Myrtle asked, her expression mock-scandalized. "In the bath? With _a boy?"_

"I'll be fine, Myrtle. Just… please go."

Myrtle took one last look between Hermione and Eli, broke out into a fresh gale of laughter, and dove into the drain of the bathroom sink, the sound of her nasal, high-pitched voice echoing into silence.

"You're on first-name terms with Moaning Myrtle?"

Hermione didn't think this was the moment for an explanation of her relationship with the ghost of the second floor girls' bathroom. "Do you think _you_ could go, too?"

"Oh," Eli said as though the thought had only just occurred to him. "Yeah. I'll just—"

"Okay," Hermione said. She just wanted to drown. "Thanks, Eli."

"Yeah. So, I'm going to go now. And I'll come back in, say, ten minutes, and hopefully you'll be gone. Sound alright?"

"Yes. Thank you."

Eli backed towards the door and out of the bathroom, taking the little "Occupied" sign with him, presumably to hang it on the doorknob on his way out.

So much for a relaxing bath. Hermione got out of the bathtub, towelled off, and dressed as quickly as she could. As soon as she'd finished knotting her hair back into an unruly bun, she caught up her things and hurried out of the Prefects' Bathroom only to nearly run into Eli on the other side of the door.

"Hello again," Eli said, a crooked grin turning up the corners of his mouth. With his eyes open now, Hermione could see that they were a shade of dark blue. Broad-shouldered and tousle-haired, he looked very much like the pictures she'd seen of his father, Dirk Creswell, who she had once eavesdropped on while they were both on the run and who had died at the hands of Death Eaters during the war.

Had it only been last year?

Hermione blinked away these troubling thoughts and found that Eli was still watching her.

"Perfect timing, eh?" he said, still smiling.

"What?"

"You're leaving now. And here I am."

"Yeah," Hermione replied vaguely, looking anywhere but at Eli. On top of everything else, she'd now have to add him, the boy standing right in front of her, and _Moaning Myrtle _to the list of people who'd seen her naked, a list that, until very recently, had included her parents and a doctor or two. She felt like running down the the hallway or maybe hiding behind the statue of Boris the Bewildered for about a year.

After a strained moment, Eli made a noise that sounded like something between a sigh and a laugh and took a step back from her. "Look, I promise I'm not actually trying to make this awkward. So I'll just say again that I'm sorry about earlier—"

"It was my fault," Hermione said.

Eli gave a little shake of his head, and Hermione knew she was only making things more difficult by delaying their parting with more talk.

"All the same," he replied. He reached out and placed hand on the doorknob of the Prefects' Bathroom, a clear signal that the conversation was, mercifully, about to end. "Have a good night, alright?"

"You, too," Hermione said. "And—"

"I'm not going to tell anyone," he said, correctly guessing what she was going to ask him. "I mean, who am I to tattle on the great Hermione Granger?"

Hermione didn't know how to react when people said things like that. "Um. Thank you." She could only hope that the "anyone" he'd mentioned included _Witch Weekly_, because if he hadn't thought of it, she certainly wasn't going to bring it up.

Eli nodded, still smiling a little even after the intensely awkward few minutes she'd just put him through. His eyes caught hers, and she couldn't help but stare. He looked so much like his father. His father who had died. So much pointless death.

"See you in class, Hermione."

"Yeah." She turned and started off down the hall before he saw the tears in her eyes. What was wrong with her? Why was she like this? She needed to be strong, needed to focus.

Nothing made sense anymore. Nothing was simple or fair.

She heard Eli whispering the password to the door of the Prefects' Bathroom as she rounded the corner into the main fifth-floor corridor, looking forward to Monday and the distraction that her classes would bring.

* * *

It was nearly ten thirty on Monday morning, and James' potion was on fire. Not boiling, or else billowing smoke. On fire.

Coughing, the smoke choking his half-healed lungs, Draco brandished his wand and sputtered, "_Aguamenti_!" over and over to no avail. The rest of the Hufflepuffs had already given up and backed away from the table, trying to steer clear of the smoke and flames. James stripped out of his smoldering robes and yelled for Slughorn, who hurried over wearing thick dragonhide gloves.

"Out of the way, out of the way!" Slughorn shouted, popping the cork of a little potion bottle and dumping its contents straight into the cauldron. The potion fizzled and hissed then turned a placid shade of sea foam green. "Terwilleger!" he gasped, turning to face James, "do not—_NOT_!—add the dragon blood before the hyssop root. I was very clear on that point, Mr. Terwilleger! Were you trying to kill us all?"

"Sorry, Professor," James said, still distracted by his burned clothes. Draco could see angry red skin blistering under his charred shirt sleeve, but was too busy trying to control his own breathing to worry much about James. He didn't want to have to take a swig of his healing potion in front of a classroom full of students. It was humiliating enough to have to drink when he was by himself.

"Now, get that arm under some water. I'll find you a salve," Professor Slughorn way saying to James. He watched James make his way to the basin in the corner of the classroom, then directed his attention to the three other cauldrons at the table. "I'm sorry to say these are no good, boys," he said to Draco, Prescott and Ryan. "You can barely tell they were Fire-Breather Brews. Shall we say 'E' for effort?"

They all nodded. Prescott and Ryan were looking grateful and relieved, but Draco knew his own potion had been a solid Outstanding.

"Mr. Terwilleger," Slughorn said, raising his voice so everyone could hear, "I'd say that was a 'T', wouldn't you?" Slughorn didn't wait for an answer. He swept back toward his desk to retrieve the salve for James with a scowl.

"Sorry, Draco," muttered James upon his return.

Draco glared back at him. "You should have let me help you." When James hung his head, cradling his burned arm against his chest, however, Draco's expression softened. He had recently acquired a certain sympathy for burns, and James' looked superficial, but painful. Finally, he shrugged. He couldn't afford to be angry with James even if he wanted to be. "Look, it's alright. How's your arm?"

"Oh, you know," said James with a small smile and a casual air, "on fire." They couldn't help it, they all laughed.

"The rest of you," Slughorn was saying from the front of the class, "take your cauldrons off of their fires and bring them to the cooling racks to congeal. We'll pick up from there on Wednesday." There was a flurry of movement as everyone did as Slughorn instructed.

Slughorn had never been cozy with Draco, but he'd almost completely dropped his jovial attitude with the rest of the student body when Headmistress McGonagall had shown the same distaste for his Slug Club meetings as Snape had the previous year. With so many students newly thrust in the limelight, Slughorn must have been foaming at the mouth to expand his collection of famous and influential young proteges. Alas, what a disappointment for him when the Headmistress had banned the Slug Club and all other society clubs. The poor man hadn't yet recovered.

Draco watched Slughorn talking with the Gryffindors as they packed up their things, the Weasley girl and Granger among them, and wondered whether the rumours were true that Slughorn had been allowed the consolation of a grand party over Halloween. Even if it was true, he thought bitterly, there was no way _he'd_ ever receive an invitation.

A few minutes later, the bell rang to signal the end of class, and, with a huff that made his walrus mustache billow, Slughorn made his way back through the shuffling students and thrust a little bottle into James' hand. "Dittany," he said.

James murmured his thanks and tipped the bottle over his arm, gingerly rubbing the dittany on his skin. It looked better at once, now pink and slightly raised. "That was stupid," he said, returning his attention to packing up his blackened supplies.

Draco stopped himself from agreeing with James as he and the others joined the queue to leave the classroom. It had been a dangerous, idiotic mistake, and one James wouldn't have made had he been focusing on his work instead of messing about with Ryan and Prescott.

"What happened?" asked Rory, catching up to them with Susan Bones and Katarina Tildman, a heavy-set seventh year girl with short brown hair.

"Bam!" James said simply, miming an explosion with his hands.

"Yeah, we'd worked that much out for ourselves, thanks," said Katarina.

"He added the dragon blood before the hyssop root," Draco explained. They passed through the dungeon room door and headed off down the hall toward the stairs. Despite everything that had happened, Draco felt a small pang of sadness as they passed the corridor to the Slytherin common room. Why would his old House turn on him so completely? How could they just abandon him, torment him, without so much as giving a reason?

Had he made the right decision in leaving? Had there even been a reason to stay?

Draco pushed these thoughts from his mind. Never mind that Slytherin had disowned him. Never mind that, now he was there, his "cover" with Hufflepuff was starting to feel more real to him every day. There was surviving, and there was everything else, and he would just have to find a way to make the everything else wait.

Sighing, Draco returned his attention to James and the others just in time to hear Rory, Susan and Katarina making tutting noises and see James glowering at them, half embarrassed, half annoyed.

"You headed to Muggle Studies, Draco?" James asked, clearly hoping for a change of topic.

"Yes."

"Have fun," said Prescott. "We all know how much you adore it."

Draco pulled a face as Prescott smirked at him. "Thanks, mate. I appreciate your support."

At the Entrance Hall, Draco and Susan broke away from the rest of the group, who all had a free period before lunch, and continued up the marble staircase toward Muggle Studies.

"So, how is it that you can take N.E.W.T. level Muggle Studies when you never took the O.W.L.?" Susan asked as they climbed the stairs together.

"I'm not getting credit for it. I just have to take it."

"Oh." Susan seemed to mull that over. "Why?"

_Why_? This question irked Draco. He thought it should be clear _why_. "Do I really have to answer that?"

Susan quelled under his annoyed glare. "No, I know why," she said in a strained whisper.

Of course she knew. Everyone knew. Because he was a Muggle-hating, Mudblood-smearing, evil evil git who needed a complete overhaul of his world view. That was why. Obviously.

Draco stuck his hands into his robes pockets and kept walking, the keys on the cord around his neck jostling against his chest. In his right pocket, he felt the smooth glass of the bottle of healing potion Madam Pomfrey had given him, and in his left, his fingers curled around the familiar folded newspaper with its list of the dead. Momentos to remind him of the things about him no one could possibly forget.

But really, it was stupid to carry on like this when Susan, someone who had lost family in the war just like him—well, not _just _like him—was trying to have a normal chat with him as if he were an actual human being instead of a rabid Grindylow or something. Draco made himself let go of the items in his pockets and checked the knot of his tie instead. It was, as usual, immaculately tied, though it still surprised him to look down and see the yellow and black stripes of Hufflepuff.

They'd started down another corridor before Susan tried make conversation with Draco again. "Do you like it so far? I know it's a lot of work but—"

"It's okay. Confusing. Like, how do airplanes stay up? Does anyone actually _know?_ And how are televisions any different than wizarding portraits? Where do they keep all the electricity when they're not using it?" Draco ran his hands through his hair impatiently, thinking that he had the utmost sympathy for Muggles now that he knew how difficult their lives must be. But he still didn't see how taking Muggle Studies was supposed to somehow _reform_ him.

At the very least, good marks in the class would look good on paper, and his dues could turn that into good will from the Wizengamot. That was the most important thing.

Thoughts of his upcoming trial froze into icicles in his stomach, jabbing at his insides with cold fear. _Just keep walking_, he told himself. _Stay calm and walk_.

"There's a lot to learn," Susan was saying, and Draco trained his attention on her words. "I think it's exciting. I want to work in the Muggle Liaison Office once I finish school. What about you?"

Draco swallowed, pushing away the panic he'd felt. He didn't know how to answer her question. What _was_ he going to do after school, assuming he didn't get sent to Azkaban, of course? _Calm down._

He shrugged. "I'm good at Potions. Maybe I'll do something with that."

Susan nodded, looking as if she knew he was thinking about the trial—it was all over the _Daily Prophet_, after all—but she didn't mention it. "Potion-making is an interesting profession," she said, then she launched into a story about her Uncle Edgar's youthful potion experimentation that lasted until they were seated in the Muggle Studies classroom.

The new Muggle Studies Professor, Hitchens, was an elderly but energetic woman. Though she was patient and explained things well, Draco was still nearly always lost. Luckily, not many students had continued to N.E.W.T. Muggle Studies, so Professor Hitchens had plenty of time to devote to each member of the class.

Ginny Weasley was already there, sitting with two Ravenclaws Draco didn't know. Professor Hitchens called for their essays and collected them before starting in on Chapter 2, _The Modern British Politics of Muggles._ It wasn't awful, but it wasn't exactly riveting stuff.

Draco caught the Wealsey girl staring at him during class more than once, but each time she looked away and busied herself with taking notes. Seeing her made Draco think of Granger, which made him think yet again of the day before in the Owlery. He sighed. He shouldn't have done that. It was foolish to snap at Granger. He just didn't know how to talk to her. His fellow Hufflepuffs were one thing; they accepted him without judgment (for the most part). He didn't have to win them over. They _wanted _to like him, so they did.

But Granger hated him. He knew that. And she was well within her rights to despise him. And there was nothing he could ever do to change that. No apology, no explanation, was going to change her mind.

_Why should it?_ he thought bitterly. As much as he wanted to tell himself that the bushy-haired walking library could go hang herself and her opinions, he wanted, _really wanted_, to make her understand. Because, despite what he'd said to the contrary, it was a challenge that had been boiling in him since they'd met in the Owlery. Because if _she _could be convinced, if she could understand why he'd done the terrible things he'd done and, more importantly, if he could make her believe that he'd left that life behind, then maybe there was some meager hope.

The first step there was understanding all of it himself, and Draco wasn't sure if he ever really would.

* * *

**A/N**: Thank you for reading! If you enjoyed this chapter of_ Jury of Hearts_, why not review it or even share it with a friend? Thank you so much for your continued support!

—Abbs


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